Current medical news and unique business news for anyone who cares about healthcare.
Government initiative to expand innovation. The Obama administration announced Thursday the Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge, a collaborative government initiative to build regional clusters of high-growth industries. The program provides $37 million for 20 areas across the country to grow the innovation economy.
Healthcare-related recipients of the funds include the Atlanta Health Information Technology Cluster and the St. Louis Bioscience Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Project. (See the full list of winners here).
The Hidden Administrative Tasks Draining Small Practices
Small practices play a critical role in healthcare delivery, but they cannot continue to absorb ever-increasing administrative demands without consequences.
Stem cell trial in Europe. European drug regulators have approved the first human embryonic stem-cell trial to take place outside of the U.S. at a British eye hospital. The treatment, developed by Advanced Cell Technology, will be used on 12 patients with Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy to prevent blindness.
Proper use of EHRs? While three-fourths of U.S. doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and insurers plan on expanding their use of digital patient data, less than half of them are taking necessary security and privacy steps to accompany the transition, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP survey of 600 executives.
$95M for ZocDoc. Popular health IT startup ZocDoc, which allows patients to book doctor appointments online, raised $25 million from Goldman Sachs in a Series C round, bringing its total to a whopping $95 million raised total.
AngioDynamics CTO resigns. The senior vice president and chief technology officer of AngioDynamics, Scott Solano, resigned to “to pursue other interests.” He is the second executive to leave the company in the past month.