Brainstorm Health: Brainstorm Health, Alexa for Health Care, Novartis Sues Amgen

Hello readers,

I’m about to take off on a flight following two amazing days at Fortune‘s Brainstorm Health conference, so we’ll have to keep things short today unfortunately (I’ll give you the full rundown soon enough, I promise).

In the meantime I highly encourage you to my colleague Andrew Nusca’s writeup of our confab’s closing panel, a conversation between co-chair Arianna Huffington and Edie Falco, the award-winning Sopranos actress and cancer survivor. Falco’s staying mantra? Maintaining an “attitude of gratitude.”

Back with you (with much more) tomorrow.

Read on for the day’s news.

Sy Mukherjee

@the_sy_guy

sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com

DIGITAL HEALTH

Alexa, can you gain HIPAA compliance? Apparently the answer is... Yes! Tech giant Amazon announced Thursday that its popular smart speaker devices (voiced by the digital assistant known as Alexa) will now broaden its scope to allow certain companies to create health care-related "skills" (i.e., voice-powered apps) for Alexa. The first digital health firm to jump on the wagon, the company tells me, is Livongo, which focuses on diabetes. Livongo customers will be able to use Alexa to ask for stats such as glucose readings.

INDICATIONS

Novartis sues Amgen. Swiss drug giant Novartis is suing competitor—and would-be partner—Amgen over a contract dispute for a new migraine drug. The treatment fueling the fire is Aimovig, which is among a new class of migraine prevention drugs. Novartis and Amgen were set to collaborate on Aimovig's marketing; but Amgen reportedly backed out of the agreement over concerns that Novartis was working on a potential Aimovig competitor (a claim that Novartis has denied). (Reuters)