UPDATED BELOW:The nation’s highest court has agreed to hear a patent violation case brought by a California diagnostic firm against the Mayo Clinic.Bloomberg reported that in accepting the case, the high court will decide which diagnostic medical tests can be patented. Prometheus Labs is the owner of the patents, which it claimed were infringed upon [...]

Mayo Clinicannounced Monday that it is licensing a genotyping test for warfarin sensitivity in clinical and research settings from Ithaca, New York-based Rheonix Inc.Warfarin is an anticoagulant and is commonly prescribed to prevent blood clot formation. One of the challenges in prescribing warfarin, however, is that patients have to be monitored through blood testing to [...]

UPDATE BELOW:The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to Compass International Innovations Inc., a manufacturer of stereotactic position systems and CT stereotactic adaptation systems, in late May. Compass International is based in Rochester, Minnesota and in addition to making these image-guided surgical systems, it sells biopsy needles and surgical arms among other [...]

This post is sponsored by Mayo Clinic Quality Conference.“We can do better” was the underlying takeaway message from the 15th Annual Mayo Clinic Quality Conference “Creating and Paying for Value in Health Care.”The conference, May 3-4, 2011, in Rochester, Minn., drew about 1,000 people to hear national leaders in health care quality as well as [...]

Researchers at Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic believe they have hit upon a new way to test for pancreatic cancer, which kills 94 percent of the roughly 43,000 Americans who are diagnosed with the condition each year.The noninvasive test involves DNA testing of patients’ stool samples. The study aimed to detect methylations in stool samples of [...]

Researchers at Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic have designed a new tool for identifying protein function from genetic code after successfully switching individual genes off and on in zebrafish, and then observing embryonic and juvenile development, the Clinic announced Monday.The feat has the potential to provide insight into how cancerous cells spread, what makes some people [...]

The Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minnesota), along with Geisinger Health System (Danville, Pennsylvania), Kaiser Permanente (Seattle, Washington), Intermountain Healthcare (Salt Lake City, Utah) and Group Health Plan (Oakland, California), announced the Care Connectivity Consortium, an initiative designed to securely share electronic medical records for their patients.The health IT collaboration seeks to improve patient care and lower [...]

A Mayo Clinic ophthalmologist has been named the new president of University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina, a regional health system serving 29 counties in eastern North Carolina.Dr. David Herman is currently medical director of the Mayo Clinic Affiliated Practice Network. He is a consultant in ophthalmology at Mayo and a professor of ophthalmology in [...]

Updated: 3:05 p.m. The ultimate validation of any corporate initiative is a big, fat embrace by popular culture. So chalk up another win for Mayo Clinic’s industry-leading healthcare social media program. It’s been recognized by the Charlie Sheen crowd.Sheen, who’s had a minor public meltdown recently, is on the hunt for an intern to help [...]

Mayo Clinic is providing expertise for a group of Harvard Business School students starting an incubator called Rock Health for people with innovative ideas for improving healthcare delivery.Dr. Michael Matly, who is in charge of business development at Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo’s two-year-old Center for Innovation, has a Harvard MBA himself. Officials at the school introduced [...]