News from other sources

Safety, quality and clinical practice

Illinois governor agrees to allow Medicaid for abortions | The New York Times

Under the new bill, signed by Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner Thursday, state health insurance and Medicaid will cover abortions. "I believe that a woman living with limited financial means should not be put in a position where she has to choose something different than a woman of higher income would be able to choose," Rauner said.

Zika was a mild bug. A new discovery shows how it turned monstrous | The Washington Post

Chinese scientists showed that a little mutation in the Zika virus is what made the virus more dangerous in the last couple of years compared to over the last half century, when it was much less troublesome.

Information technology

Penn Medicine using predictive model to anticipate ER visits by lung cancer patients | Health Data Management

Penn researchers predicted lung cancer patients' emergency department visits over a two-week span by using EHR data to build a model that takes into account notable comorbidities, such as cardiac arrhythmia.

PatientSafe closes $25 million round to boost clinical communication innovation | Medcity News

PatientSafe, maker of a mobile communication and care coordination platform, will use the funding to grow operations.

Pharmaceuticals

Eli Lilly wins U.S. approval for breast cancer drug | Reuters

The FDA approved abemaciclib, which Eli Lilly will sell under the name Verzenio, for about $10,948 per month. The drug stops cancer cells from dividing and spreading and will compete with Pfizer's Ibrance and Novartis' Kisqali.

In other news

He thought he had a lung tumor. It was a tiny toy traffic cone he inhaled 40 years ago | The Washington Post

Paul Baxter's doctors thought he had a lung tumor. But when they did a bronchoscopy, they found something much more foreign to the body: a Playmobil traffic cone—part of a set the patient had received for his seventh birthday.