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Bristol-Meyers Squibb is apparently the best health care company at research and development

The cost of creating a new drug for a pharma company is somewhere around $5 billion right now, and often takes 10 years or more. If someone approached your company and told you, “We want to take 5 billion dollars… Continue Reading

The ‘telemetric age’ — a.k.a. ‘The Internet Of Things’ — could be normative by 2025. (Gird your loins!)

This, today, from Pew Research: “One positive effect of ‘ubiquitous computing,’ as it used to be called, will be much faster, more convenient, and lower-cost medical diagnostics. This will be essential if we are to meet the health care needs… Continue Reading

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From the ‘we’ve come a long way’ file: an African-American man in Mississippi currently has a shorter life expectancy than an average American did in 1960. Whoa.

However you choose to slice it, the health care situation in the United States is a bit of a wreck, to be sure. The Commonwealth Fund just released some detailed rankings of health care performance state-by-state, and then the main… Continue Reading

New potential (logical?) use of social media: spotting disease/illness trends ahead of time

From here: “The big advantage of social media is you can get a lot more data, and you can get it more quickly and more economically,” said Henry Niman, a biomedical researcher and president of Pittsburgh-based Recombinomics Inc., which analyzes… Continue Reading

Is Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta, Maine the best hospital in America? Maybe.

Consumer Reports just ranked 2,591 U.S. hospitals, based on the most recent available data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The general rating high bar was meant to be 100, and depressingly,… Continue Reading

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Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston is using Google Glass in the ER. OK, cool. Cool? Cool.

Imagine you find yourself in the ER for something not-so-great (like a fall). Now imagine your doctor rolls up wearing Google Glass, which isn’t mainstream in the least yet. Would you be freaked out? You might be, or if you were too… Continue Reading

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On Larry Page, dreaming big, and anonymous health care “big data”

Larry Page appeared at the TED 30th Anniversary conference in Vancouver, speaking on stage with Charlie Rose (part of the interview is above, and you can find a deeper transcript here). There are about 127 different headlines you could go… Continue Reading

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Could a mouth swab for cortisol levels change how we approach mental illness?

If you’ve never heard of cortisol, here’s a quick primer: Cortisol, known more formally as hydrocortisone (INN, USAN, BAN), is a steroid hormone, to be more specific a glucocorticoid, produced by the zona fasciculata of the adrenal cortex.[1] It is released in response to stress and a low level of blood glucocorticoids. Its… Continue Reading