Telehealth owner sentenced in $56M Medicare fraud; NIH trial cuts HIV incidence by 70% in rural Kenya, Uganda; quarter-sized microneedle skin patch for immune monitoring – Morning Medical Update

Telehealth owner sentenced in $56M Medicare brace fraud scheme

The owner of two telehealth companies has been sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay $27.9 million in restitution for his role in a $56 million Medicare fraud scheme involving unnecessary orthotic braces. Federal prosecutors say Reinaldo Wilson, 57, formerly of Richmond Hill, Georgia, paid illegal kickbacks to medical providers to sign off on brace orders for thousands of beneficiaries who did not need them, then sold those orders to marketing and brace companies that billed Medicare. Between 2017 and 2019, the scheme generated more than $56 million in false claims, with Medicare paying nearly $28 million. Wilson pleaded guilty in 2021 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud.

NIH-backed strategy cuts HIV infections 70% in rural Kenya and Uganda

A trial supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reduced new HIV infections by 70% in 16 rural communities in Kenya and Uganda by combining home-based testing, personalized prevention and care, and a digital app linking community health workers to clinics. Over two years, just seven of roughly 42,000 people in intervention communities acquired HIV, compared with 22 in control communities. The approach — presented at the 33rd Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2026) in Denver, Colorado — also quadrupled uptake of prevention tools like PrEP and PEP, while maintaining high rates of treatment and viral suppression.

“The findings from this innovative study underscore the critical value of conducting implementation research that tests HIV prevention and treatment strategies in real world settings,” said Jeffrey K. Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., acting director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which co-funded the study.

Microneedle skin patch offers painless immune monitoring

Researchers at The Jackson Laboratory, working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have developed a quarter-sized microneedle patch that painlessly samples immune cells from the skin, potentially reducing the need for blood draws and biopsies. In findings published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the patch uses tiny dissolvable needles and a hydrogel coating to capture resident memory T cells and inflammatory signals within minutes to hours after a brief antigen exposure. Early testing in mice and a small human study showed the device could recover key immune cells involved in infections, vaccines and autoimmune skin conditions such as psoriasis and vitiligo. The technology could eventually support easier monitoring of vaccine responses, cancer therapies and chronic inflammatory diseases, and may enable at-home immune tracking.