Information technology
How Alzheimer's defined a family | The Wall Street JournalAbout two dozen DeMoe family members participate in research in Pittsburgh, traveling once a year for several days of testing, or to Washington University in St. Louis, where researchers are conducting a clinical trial aimed at drugs to stop or slow Alzheimer's disease in patients with dominantly inherited Alzheimer's.
Medical devices and equipment
Instead of trashing a $600 EpiPen, some patients get a refill | Kaiser Health NewsSome doctors — frustrated by what they see as unreasonable price tags and political stagnation — are coming up with do-it-yourself solutions. Their efforts to bring down costs for their patients highlight the arbitrary and often needlessly exorbitant prices of drugs in the U.S., they say.
Insurers pay twice as much as hospitals for hip and knee replacements | STAT
Imagine this: You go to buy a car, but you don't know who makes it, how other customers feel it's performing, or how its price compares to other cars in its class. This is exactly the situation facing insurers who reimburse hospitals for orthopedic implants, and a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals they are paying more than twice what hospitals do for devices inserted into hundreds of thousands of patients every year.
Pharmaceuticals
Novartis cancer division races to catch up with rivals | ReutersNovartis is making progress in its bid to catch rivals developing drugs that harness the immune system to fight cancer, one of its top research scientists and latest recruit from Harvard University told Reuters in an interview.
Safety, quality and clinical practice
The Pap smear: groundbreaking, lifesaving – and obsolete? | STATPap tests are one of the most familiar — and successful — cancer screening tests ever invented. Since their introduction in the 1950s, cervical cancer deaths in the US have fallen by more than 60 percent. But now, a growing number of scientists say, the Pap may be past its prime.
Why are more young Americans getting colon cancer? | NPR
While overall rates of colorectal cancer have been falling dramatically since the mid-1980s, there's been a steady uptick of this disease among people younger than 50.