Current medical news and unique business news for anyone who cares about healthcare.
One immediate payoff of electronic health records. A couple of large drug companies, led by Pfizer, plan to pay New York hospitals $50,000 to $200,000 to participate in a pilot project in which hospitals would mine their databases to find patients for drugmakers’ clinical trials, Bloomberg Business reports. Despite the hefty price tag, drugmakers are willing to pay it because of the even higher cost of delayed trials. This project will follow federal privacy laws, including required patient consent before any personal information would be given out, but it is likely to raise some ethical questions.
New diabetes shot cuts cholesterol. A new Sanofi diabetes drug, REGN727, significantly cut cholesterol when injected in patients also taking Lipitor during early tests. Pfizer and Amgen are also developing similar diabetes shots targeting the same protein.
What Are Healthcare Organizations Getting Wrong about Email Security?
A new report by Paubox calls for healthcare IT leaders to dispose of outdated assumptions about email security and address the challenges of evolving cybersecurity threats.
#HCSM. Just having a Facebook doesn’t cut it these days. Twitter is on the rise at healthcare institutions, and Hospital Review has 7 tips for making the most of your Twitter account.
Taking HIEs mobile? A lobbyist group called Young Invincibles is pushing to take state health insurance exchanges mobile. Mobile-enabled HIEs would give young people — who account for a large population of the un- or under-insured — better access to those resources.
Bill Gates talks Big Pharma. We heard what Bill Gates had to say about vaccines, but this week Matthew Harper writes about what didn’t make the Forbes cover story — Gates’ comments about the pharmaceutical industry. “There’s always this divergence between what’s financially attractive and what has dramatic profit and the number of life years that you really save,” he says.
Economic recovery through innovation. The San Diego not-for-profit organization Connect has some ideas on innovation policy that would spark economic recovery in the U.S. Among the company’s suggestions is retaining high-achieving foreign students who now must leave the U.S. after earning a degree and raising the cap on direct public offerings by small businesses.