At first glance, the new class of drugs appeared to be potent weapons in the fight against type 2 diabetes. Known as CB1 receptor antagonists, the drugs block the action of a cellular receptor called CB1, essentially helping modulate how a person experiences hunger, pain, and other sensations. Blocking that receptor, researchers hoped, could yield effective treatments for both obesity and diabetes. But subsequent studies also found a potential link to psychiatric side effects including anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Although the efficacy of the CB1 class in treating diabetes was not in doubt, the potential side effects were considered unacceptable.

Billlionaire investor Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks and Landmark Theaters and is a regular on Shark Tank, has expanded his interests to personalized health. He is part of a group of investors in mobile health startup, Validic,which raised $760,000 in a seed round. The Durham, North Carolina company has developed a platform to integrate and aggregate data from more than 80 health-oriented apps.

Since debuting its telehealth kiosk at CES in January, three-year-old HealthSpot has raised at least $10.4 million in Series C funding and is working on building a national provider network so that it can set up its primary care kiosks in retail pharmacies.

Big data may be about to overwhelm the healthcare system. A little healthcare business intelligence tip: Data by itself won’t drive value and outcomes. Smart healthcare analytics will. In Deloitte’s DBrief, “Big Data Revolution: Unlocking Healthcare Analytics,” healthcare industry experts talked about the opportunities and barriers for industries across the care continuum to harness data, contextualize it and use it to move from hindsight to insight (and eventually, with the help of predictive analytics, foresight).