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An untraceable currency called Zerocoin is being designed by Johns Hopkins University researchers to compete with other virtual moneys such as Bitcoin. The researchers say that if virtual currencies are going to exist, there should be one that provides the same kind of privacy that people have when exchanging traditional forms of money. 

Inside a drab computer lab at Johns Hopkins University, a team of researchers is trying to build something that has never existed before: a digital currency that changes hands completely in secret. Its name is Zerocoin.

A high sugar diet greatly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease regardless of body weight, according to a new study by the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study, which is the biggest one of its kind to date and has included more than 10,000 people followed for up to 14.6 years, concludes that people who drink, for example, one soft drink per day increase their risk of cardiovascular disease by one-third.

Taking a page from national payers such as Aetna and Humana, Independence Blue Cross opened an innovation lab this week. The idea is to use it to examine the best ways to integrate startup ideas from DreamIt Health companies and research insights produced with its provider collaborations at Penn Medicine and New York University Langone Medical Center.

Insurance companies have a reputation for moving slow as molasses and being resistant to change. But the changes mapped out by the Affordable Care Act are forcing them to make changes. Will adding a few white boards and comfortable chairs in a separate from its corporate offices make that much difference at IBC?

For the first time, Montgomery College and industry giant Lockheed Martin join together to meet the nation’s growing demand for cyber security professionals. Register now to benefit from this exciting partnership where you will learn from the industry’s leading experts in secure software development.

Malcolm Gladwell opened his healthcare talk with a joke. Confessing that he is expert in neither healthcare nor interoperability, the long-time journalist revealed that he had actually pondered how his former self would cover his present self as a speaker — likely with “quotes out of context and something really snarky.”

The best-selling author and New Yorker staffer likened the change required for healthcare to make it over the interoperability hurdle to several events of this generation, “three lessons in culture, framing and consequence,” as he put it during Health Care Innovation Day.

Every month in the Startup Index, we publish a list of the startup stories that got the most attention. Scroll down to the end of the report to find this list. There is usually a common thread among the companies in the list – geography, focus, industry sector. This month the list is all over the place:

Read more: http://medcitynews.com/2014/02/janauary-top-5-startup-list-makes-optimistic-innovation-healthcare/#ixzz2svRNpfzk

Epidarex Capital, a leading international early-stage life science venture capital fund, has announced a £4 million Series A investment, in Edinburgh Molecular Imaging (EMI). Scottish Enterprise’s investment arm, the Scottish Investment Bank, also participated in the round. EMI, an Edinburgh BioQuarter spin-out company from the University of Edinburgh, is developing a pioneering Optical Molecular Imaging (OMI) technology with the potential to address unmet needs in the diagnosis and monitoring of several major diseases.

EMI’s highly innovative OMI technology revolves around the development of fluorescent imaging reagents that detect harmful processes deep inside the human body, at the bedside, in real time and at molecular resolution. The company’s initial focus is on lung conditions but the technology is applicable to a wide spectrum of disease. The company’s approach has the potential to transform clinicians’ ability to diagnose and manage a number of serious respiratory conditions, including lung cancer, fibrosis, lung infections and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). EMI’s technology will address the pressing need for tests which can rapidly provide diagnostic certainty and reduce healthcare costs. Respiratory diseases kill one in five people in the UK and cost the NHS over £6 billion per year, with lung cancer being the biggest cancer killer.

Ozarks Medical Center in Missouri and Flagstaff Medical Center in Arizona are just two hospitals in 25 states across the country that will receive federal funding for telemedicine projects. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced nearly $16 million in USDA grants would be disbursed for distant learning and telemedicine services.

The USDA’s Distance Learning and Telemedicine Loan and Grant program provides funding to rural hospitals, clinics, schools and libraries for equipment and technical assistance for telemedicine and distance learning. Grant recipients must demonstrate that they serve rural America, prove there is an economic need and provide at least 15 percent in matching funds.

Three of the University of Pennsylvania’s health-related research centers have teamed up to launch an innovative grant program designed to lure academic investigators out of their insular comfort zones into large scale interdisciplinary research projects.

The three—Penn’s Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB), Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) and Center for Public Health Initiatives (CPHI)—are offering a novel funding structure they hope will pull together researchers from a variety of disciplines to focus on “big ideas” related to improving the health of populations.

Frustrated  by unpredictable and often political funding for science research,  a handful of young researchers think they’ve found the answer: crowdfunding.

Jackson Solway Experiment.com Co-founder and CEO Cindy Wu The researchers–who have backgrounds in synthetic biology, rocket science and other disciplines–built much of  their startup, Experiment.com, while at the Y Combinator accelerator in 2013.