Category: Regulations
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Special: Health Care Experts Propose Sweeping Cost Control Changes
Updated: 4 August 2012 A group of noted health care policy experts offer a series of proposals they say can rein in health care costs, with implications for the federal budget, the economy as a whole, and developers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The panel, convened by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think-tank…
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Trial Tests Non-Invasive Glucose Monitor in Surgery Patients
Echo Therapeutics Inc., a medical device company in Philadelphia, says a clinical trial shows the accuracy of its non-invasive continuous glucose monitoring system with 15 surgical patients. The trial involved general surgery and cardiothoracic surgery patients in the intensive care unit at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. The trial tested Echo Therapeutics’ Symphony tCGM…
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Most Hospitals in Collaborative Gain on Quality Measures
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey says its Aligning Forces for Quality initiative improved the quality of care for patients in measurable ways at hospitals in 16 communities in the U.S. The foundation released results from an evaluation of the program that aims to improve the quality of health care, reduce disparities,…
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Computer Simulation Models Effects of HIV Policies
A Brown University epidemiologist developed a computer simulation that can model the spread of HIV in New York City, under various scenarios of interventions. Brandon Marshall (pictured left) discusses his work in two sessions at this week’s International AIDS Society Conference in Washington, D.C. The model creates a community of individual actors, who engage in…
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Award Funds Malaria Drug Anti-Counterfeiting Technology
The organization Saving Lives at Birth has awarded a Boston University engineering professor a grant to complete development of technology that can determine the potency of drugs like those to treat malaria. The two-year $250,000 grant will fund Muhammad Zaman’s (pictured left) work on PharmaCheck, a handheld microfluidic — lab-on-a-chip — device. PharmaCheck scans pills…
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Network Model IDs Airports Most Likely to Spread Disease
Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a mathematical model that identifies the U.S. airports most likely to influence the spread of disease early in an epidemic. The findings of the team from MIT’s civil and environmental engineering department are found in the online journal PLoS One. The use of network models to track…
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Study: Better Medical Device Security Alerts Needed
Researchers at University of Massachusetts in Amherst and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (affiliated with Harvard Medical School) uncovered indications that security and privacy problems with medical devices may not be adequately reported or tracked by regulators. The team reported its findings yesterday in the online journal PLoS One. The computer scientists and…
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Technology Developed to Diagnose, Treat Atrial Fibrillation
Researchers at University of California in San Diego and Los Angeles, and Indiana University have discovered that irregular heart rhythms known as atrial fibrillation are the result of small electrical sources within the heart, in the form of spinning electrical rotors or focal beats. The research team published its findings online in the Journal of…
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New Methods Found to Better Monitor Glucose, Control Insulin
Researchers at the medical centers of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have found newer technologies to monitor blood sugar and replenish insulin for people with type 1 diabetes to work more effectively in many cases than traditional methods. The findings of the team led by Johns Hopkins medical…
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UCLA to Study Copper Surfaces to Reduce Hospital Infections
University of California in Los Angeles received a $2.5 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for a clinical trial to test the use of copper to decrease the number of hospital-acquired infections. The research team will be led by the university’s Sustainable Technology and Policy Program and include members from UCLA’s…