Pharmaceuticals
New Medicare Advantage tool to lower drug prices puts crimp in patients' choices | Kaiser Health News
Starting next year, Medicare Advantage plans will be able to add restrictions on expensive, injectable drugs administered by doctors to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, macular degeneration and other serious diseases.
Medical devices
Anatomy of a beep: A medical device giant and an avant-garde musician set out to redesign a heart monitor's chirps | STAT
Nearly a million Americans have bits of Medtronic hardware nestled inside their chests to keep tabs on — and, sometimes, intervene in — their heart rhythms. Those implantable devices come with a plastic doohickey that sits at the bedside as a kind of cardiac satellite, taking in data on how well a person's blood is being pumped and then beaming the information out to a webpage for their physician to check.
Local medical device start-up raises funds to sell its hand-held transfusion device in Africa | The Baltimore Sun
Sisu Global, a Baltimore-based start-up that develops medical technologies for developing nations, said it has raised the money to launch its first product, a low-cost transfusion device.
Safety, quality and clinical practice
Half as many people are trying heroin, but marijuana use grows | Kaiser Health News
Some good news from the front lines of the heroin crisis: Half as many people tried heroin for the first time in 2017 as in 2016. That's according to data released Friday from the government's annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The survey found that marijuana use, however, increased in 2017, especially among pregnant women and young adults.
Technology
Paper Jam: California's Medicaid program hits 'print' when the feds need info | California Healthline
In the shadow of Silicon Valley, the hub of the world's digital revolution, California officials still submit their records to the feds justifying billions in Medicaid spending the old-fashioned way: on paper.
