Current medical news and unique business news for anyone who cares about the healthcare industry.
The battle over same-day DNA: Life Technologies and Illumina each expect to roll out machines that will sequence an individual’s entire genome in one day, with the former company’s machine expected to do the job for $1,000 and be released in about a year. The difference between the two is cost and quality. Life Technologies sequencer will cost $150,000; Illumina’s $740,000.
Laughing at health reform: MIT economist Jonathan Gruber has come out with a new comic book aimed at teaching readers about health reform. Gruber, who helped shape both ObamaCare and RomneyCare, has titled the book “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works.”
Mitt’s folly: “Incidental Economist” Aaron Carroll explains the foolishness of Mitt Romney’s recent suggestion that people should “fire” their insurance companies if they receive poor service. If only it was or ever could be that easy. Not a good way to look like you understand the plight of the common man, Mitt.
Tough times at WebMD: The medical advice website has scrapped plans to sell itself, warned investors of declining profits in 2012 and, oh yeah, the CEO resigned. Not a good day for WebMD.
Post-breakup Abbott: Medical devices will contribute about 27 percent of Abbott‘s sales after it spins out its research pharmaceuticals unit later this year. Abbott will split into two publicly traded companies, creating a new entity for the research pharma unit and keeping the Abbott name for the remaining medical products businesses.
Paging Dr. Algorithm: Computers will soon do the routine work that’s now done by doctors, writes Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla. There will be initial resistance and derision but “Dr. Algorithm” will continuously improve and become an integral part of the health system.
[Photo from flickr user andylepp]
By Brandon Glenn MedCity News
Brandon Glenn is the Ohio bureau chief for MedCity News.More posts by Author
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