A bite-sized review of life science current events you need to know about this week.
A company developing a celiac disease drug to replace gluten-free eating in certain patients announced it began Phase 1 clinical trials. The drug takes aim at interfering with the body’s immune response to gluten in celiac patients.
Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla ruffled some feathers last week when he compared modern healthcare to witchcraft. The Sun Microsystems co-founder said healthcare needs to be more data-driven. Oh, and 80 percent of doctors will be replaced by technology.
What’s a great way to tick off your customers? Make them pay more. That’s what Envoy Medical, maker of the first fully implantable hearing aid system, Esteem, is finding out as it makes some changes that patients aren’t too keen on. Apparently, patients will now be required to pay for any adjustments by an Envoy-trained medical professional following the implant and activation. The company’s CEO says that the shift is occurring because patient’s care is best managed through their implanting surgeon and an Esteemed-trained audiologist, not the company.
Rare is the tweeting healthcare executive, but we managed to track down 10 of them.
Proteus Digital Health’s sensor pill was smart, but this is even smarter. It would be years before we see it on the market, but the next generation of smart medicine just may lie in a tiny chip that’s implanted inside the body and programmed wirelessly to release doses of drugs at the right time.
We didn’t write these, but you should read them anyway.
- Romney and Obama sure didn’t talk a whole lot about Obamacare during their convention speeches – so what did they talk about? According to this word cloud, jobs, families, business and women.
- A 17-year old high school junior beat out nine other semi-finalists in NPR’s “Joe’s Big Idea” video contest by building an electrocardiogram that sends data through a cellphone.
- Want free admission to FastForward Health, a film festival highlighting public health innovators around the world, in San Francisco on October 30th? Check out the Crowdtilt campaign it’s running.
- KV Pharmaceuticals (which previously provided an example of how not to do social media in healthcare) is now apparently willing to bargain on the price of its preterm birth drug Makena.
Tweets we liked this week:
Some think it doesn’t hurt a local tech scene if a startup leaves. Let it return & give back to the community: ph.ly/S7_Nz
’ Technically Philly (@TechnicallyPHL) September 7, 2012
PAs use smartphones more than MDs – What % of HCPs Use Smartphones During Patient Consultations? bit.ly/Q96JQ3 via @ihealthbeat #data
’ Erin McMaster (@ESMcMaster) September 6, 2012
Will the Health Innovation Highway do for medicine what the Internet did for business? fastcompany.com/3000943/look-a’
’ Rock Health (@Rock_Health) September 6, 2012
30% of app users have uninstalled an app b/c they learned it was collecting personal info they didn’t wish to share pewrsr.ch/TnzRrr
’ Pew Internet (@pewinternet) September 5, 2012
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
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