In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at Phil Knight’s big cancer gift, Medallion’s healthcare credentialing clearinghouse, a new treatment for fibromyalgia, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife Penny donated $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute, the largest such pledge made to a university. Before this donation, announced last week, the couple had donated $600 million to the institute. Knight, 87, and his family are worth $35.6 billion, by Forbes’ calculations.

The gift will support the institute’s ongoing research into cancer treatments and diagnostics, Brian Druker, who left the institute as CEO in December and will return as president with this gift, told Forbes. The federal government’s cutbacks on research spending are “horrible,” he said, but the infusion of money into the institute, “might allow us to recruit some incredible people.” The Knights’ gift is larger than Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins in 2018.

The institute also will focus on improving the care experience for cancer patients, taking the pressure off of them to navigate a labyrinthine system during one of the most challenging times of their lives. “A patient gets a call, somebody tells them ‘You've got cancer,’ and then has them make 25 different appointments,” he said. “And they've got to battle with their insurance company and they've got to talk to their employer about getting some medical leave.”

Druker, a cancer researcher known for developing the drug Gleevac for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, hopes to take that burden from patients. “You just show up at the appointment. You want a mental health consult? We got that. You want to get some help with nutrition? It’s taken care of. We'll call your insurance company. We’ll make sure we get the approvals you need. Imagine it being that simple so you could just focus on your care.”

The Institute will spend the next few months working out how to make this kind of care navigation possible, and then roll it out.

Doctors can only practice medicine in states where they’re licensed. Then each insurer they work with needs to verify their credentials. It’s a messy and time-consuming process that costs more than $1 billion each year.

Medallion’s Derek Lo figures that his software can cut through the system’s redundancies, slashing the time and cost of paperwork designed to prevent quacks from practicing medicine and safeguard patients that’s spiraled into something burdensome. “It doesn’t make sense to credential the same doctor 20 times and do it every three years across all these plans. There should be a single clearinghouse to standardize this,” he told Forbes.

On Monday, the San Francisco-based startup launched a new clearinghouse, which it calls CredAlliance, to do just that, after months of building in stealth. To date, it has signed up a few dozen payers and, Lo said, five of the........

© Forbes