Information technology
Trans patients get help from afar thanks to telemedicine | San Francisco ChronicleA young doctor from Delaware with a transgender patient wanted to know how his medications for bipolar disorder would affect his hormone therapy. The physician, still in a residency program, contacted TransLine, an e-consultation service that operates out of San Francisco's Lyon-Martin Health Services, which serves women and transgender people.
Medical devices and equipment
Medtronic agrees to share data in patient-safety effort | Minneapolis Star TribuneMinnesota-run Medtronic and California-based Masimo Corp. are bitter rivals when it comes to selling medical devices that detect health problems by measuring patients' blood oxygen levels in the hospital or clinic. But when it comes to patient safety, the leaders of the two companies are now sitting at the same table to discuss how they can share de-identified patient data with each other, as well as outside researchers and entrepreneurs, to predict health problems.
Pharmaceuticals
After controversial drug decision, FDA tries transparency | Roll CallThe decision to approve a controversial rare-disease treatment has haunted the Food and Drug Administration in recent weeks. But instead of shying away from the controversy, the FDA has been remarkably transparent about how the decision was made. On Thursday night, the agency laid bare the disagreements between its highest officials by releasing 300 pages of internal emails and on Friday, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf addressed the debate.
Cuba's innovative cancer vaccine is finally coming to America | The Atlantic
A promising lung-cancer vaccine called CIMAvax was developed in Cuba and soon will begin clinical trials in the U.S. CIMAvax is so interesting, scientifically speaking, because it belongs to a new class of cancer treatments called immunotherapy. Rather than using a scalpel, radiation, or chemicals to take cancerous cells out directly, immunotherapy stimulates the patient's own immune system to fight cancer.
Roche says flexible pricing ready for cancer, not MS drugs | Reuters
The spotlight on finding a cancer cure has spurred improvements in systems to collect and analyze oncology data, but efforts to track patients with other diseases lag behind, Roche pricing head Jens Grueger said. Consequently, new data-driven flexible pricing schemes the Swiss drugmaker and others in the industry are pushing to replace today's "pay-per-pill" approach are well advanced in cancer treatment but will take longer for conditions like multiple sclerosis.
Physicians
A Doctor Shortage? Let's take a closer look | New York TimesMany people have to wait too long to see a doctor. And it could get worse. If, as many people believe, we have a shortage of doctors in the United States, then it follows that we can fix this only by training and hiring more physicians. As with almost everything in our health care system, though, it's complicated.
Safety, quality and clinical practice
First-year doctors would be allowed to work 24-hour shifts under new rules | Washington PostThe organization that oversees the training of young doctors recommended Friday that first-year physicians in hospitals be allowed to work 24-hour shifts — eight hours longer than they are permitted now.
What does Lancet study on early autism intervention really show? | Forbes
Autistic children whose parents participated in an early intervention program have a reduced likelihood of having intensified symptoms by age 10, says a new study published in The Lancet. The authors say that theirs is the first long-term look at the outcomes of an intervention like this. But a close examination of their data raises questions about how distinctive the claim of improvement with the intervention program is.
Drug-resistant fungus linked to 4 U.S. hospital deaths | USA Today
A deadly new drug-resistant fungus has been linked to the deaths of four hospital patients in the U.S., according to a report released Friday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
