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Decreasing market shares and concerns about use are potential factors in J&J’s decision to stop making stents. Shares of Boston Scientific Corp. went up Wednesday after Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Cordis announced it will discontinue manufacturing heart stents by year’s end. The company is pulling out of a competitive but shrinking market, as the use of stents is being questioned for some patients who doctors think might benefit more from cheaper, safer drugs. A statement from Cordis, which manufactured the first FDA-approved drug-coated stent in 2003, also said the company will cut 900 to 1,000 jobs in the remainder of the year.
Hospitals fall behind on IT changes. The American Hospital Association says most hospitals have yet to being the the federally mandated switch from the ICD-9 medical coding system to the ICD-10 system, despite the looming October 2013 deadline. The overhaul is expected to cost large hospitals between $2 million and $5 million. “It’s probably more complex than Y2K,” said Robert Alger, vice president of health plan IT strategy at Kaiser Permanente.
Progress on $720M NIH drug discovery center? Nature Medicine reports that plans for an NIH drug development center are coming together despite seemingly ambitions plans by Director Francis Collins to launch in October.
EMR market expected to hit $6B by 2015. MarketsandMarkets, a research and consulting firm, says the U.S. electronic medical records market is on track to reach $6 billion by 2015. There are currently more than 1,000 EMR providers in the market, with Allscripts and Meditech the respective physicians office- and hospital-targeted leaders in market share.
In other breaking news, Americans are unhealthy. Despite the U.S. spending more money per person on healthcare than any other country, we’re falling behind on improving our life expectancy, according to a new analysis by the University of Washington published in Population Health Metrics. Here’s another shocker: high rates of obesity and smoking are two of the big reasons cited for the U.S.’s poor showing in the study.
By Deanna Pogorelc MedCity News
Deanna Pogorelc is a Cleveland-based reporter who writes obsessively about life science startups across the country, looking to technology transfer offices, startup incubators and investment funds to see what’s next in healthcare. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ball State University and previously covered business and education for a northeast Indiana newspaper.More posts by Author
In the midst of all this healthcare reform change, there are also ICD-10 conversions required by Oct. 2013. Are health plans ready? http://www.healthcaretownhall.com/?p=3817