A new series of billboard and television ads is outraging Georgians, who object to the “Stop Sugarcoating It, Georgia” campaign being run by the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta pediatric hospital. The ads depict overweight and obese children in a variety of settings, and are meant to shock parents into action.The campaign, launched in August 2011, [...]

The Is My Cancer Different? campaign urges patients to ask their doctors a crucial question ’ is my cancer different? ’ and provides powerful information on why, when and how it could matter to their treatment choices.Presented in video format and featuring cancer survivors, physicians, scientists, advocates and Ronnie Andrews, the president of Clarient, the [...]

The term “open source” describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product’s source materials. I’m sure you’ve heard of open source software such as Perl, WordPress, Linux and Android, and are familiar with open content projects such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary, but what about open source drug discovery?Specifically, Open Source [...]

While computer gamers have long used gaming to interact with one another, build social connections, and de-stress, it’s now possible to contribute to scientific exploration while gaming. A new computer game called FoldIt encourages gamers to attempt to fold proteins into the lowest energy structure.From the FoldIt website:[K]nowing the structure of a protein is key [...]

WebLib, a small international technology startup of experts in information retrieval, natural language processing and medical informatics, recently released NLMplus, a semantic search and knowledge discovery application that utilizes a variety of semantic resources and natural language processing tools to produce improved search results from the vast collection of biomedical data and services of the [...]

Mobile technology company Qualcomm announced today the formation of a new subsidiary, Qualcomm Life. The subsidiary will run the company’s former Wireless Health business. Qualcomm Life was unveiled Monday at the mHealth Summit in Washington D.C. As part of the launch, Qualcomm presented the 2net hub, a mobile device designed to plug into a wall [...]

While the alleged link between vaccines — particularly the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine — and autism has been thoroughly discredited in more than 20 well-conducted studies of vaccine side effects [1], fears about the side effects of vaccination nevertheless remain a major factor influencing the healthcare decisions some parents make. This has led [...]

Regardless of high or low overall scores on an IQ test, children with dyslexia show similar patterns of brain activity, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. The results call into question the discrepancy model — the practice of classifying a child as dyslexic on the basis of [...]

We’ve been fighting the war on cancer for forty years and although there has been a decrease in U.S. cancer deaths, the global burden of cancer has doubled over the last three decades [1]. Indeed, the leading cause of death in the world today is cancer, followed by heart disease and stroke [2,3]. Cancer also [...]

Last Thursday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the highly anticipated final regulations for accountable care organizations (ACOs) under Section 3022 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) [1]. The PPACA requires accountable-care agreements to be offered under Medicare, starting in 2012.What is an Accountable Care Organization (ACO)?An [...]