Benzodiazepine overdose deaths soared in recent years, study finds | CNN
Another prescription drug threat may have been overlooked amid growing alarm over the epidemic of prescription opioid overdoses and deaths across the U.S. Use of benzodiazepines, including Xanax and Valium, has risen over the last 20 years, with increases seen in both the number of Americans prescribed the drugs and quantity of prescriptions filled, according to researchers in the American Journal of Public Health. The drugs were responsible for 30% of overdose deaths in 2013.
Cancer research moves to the cloud to improve patient care | STAT
Seven Bridges, a Cambridge, Mass.-based biomedical data-analysis company, has announced it is putting the National Institutes of Health's Cancer Genome Atlas into the cloud and making it free for any scientist to use. The data, over a petabyte of complete DNA data and analysis for about 11,000 cancer patients, previously was housed at two institutions and required any scientist interested in using to download and store the entire database to their own institution's servers.
New York hospitals try new ways to prevent infections | Wall Street Journal
New York hospitals have seen an overall decline in rates of hospital acquired infections among patients, but the rate remains higher than the national average. Several state hospitals have set their own infection control teams to the task of researching strategies for improvement, and the state's health department has instituted an infection-surveillance program that flags hospitals with higher-than-average infection rates, requiring them to submit correction plans.
This graph shows how damaging data breaches are on hospitals | Pacific Standard
Hacking incidents like the attack on Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in California this month pose threats to patient care and the integrity of patient records, and also exact a financial cost for the institutions, whether it's the cost of identity theft protection for patients, remediation efforts or ransom for hijacked records. But breaches also impact hospitals' reputations, as this chart from Ponemon Institute survey data shows.
