News Archive

Less than 10 percent of hospitals have warmed up to RFID technology. That’s the assessment of Mark Roberti, the founder and editor of RFID Journal, so it’s very much an emerging trend in healthcare. The idea is that by using resources more effectively, hospital staff can spend less time running around trying to find medical supplies and more time with patients.

“The reason why healthcare costs are so high is hospitals keep buying things they already have and waste money,” Roberti said at a conference organized by his Journal which focused on RFID in Healthcare. Hospitals have been so focused on the priority of saving lives that they have been slow to adopt technology that saves money.

ZocDoc dug into America’s “largest database of patient behavior” to discover the top patient trends of 2013.

ZocDoc makes it easy for people to book doctors appointments through its online booking service. More than 4 million patients use ZocDoc every month, and their interactions provide a wealth of data and insights that were never available before.

Each year, nearly $100 billion is spent in the United States on healthcare related research, with an increasing proportion of the breakthrough research being carried out in academic medical centers. While continued medical progress relies on enhanced academic-industry collaboration, the information available on the academic commercialization system function across these institutions is not uniform and often difficult to access.

The Medical Innovation Playbook is the first-ever comprehensive study of technological innovation and commercialization at the nation’s top healthcare centers.

As aging populations put a strain on cash-strapped governments, chronic illness and rare disease prevention is taking centre stage in healthcare. To meet new levels of demand, the sector is ramping up its innovative capacity through collaborations. But harnessing the disruptive potential of these partnerships is still very much a work in progress, according to participants of the INSEAD Healthcare Alumni Summit in Zurich in October this year.

Collaborations are widely seen by the sector as crucial to raise extra finance amid a credit crunch, share risk, boost research productivity, discover new therapies – and ultimately to reinvent the way healthcare is delivered. So large and small pharma companies, hospitals, pharmacy chains, venture capital firms, IT consultants, and academia are forming an array of partnerships.

A Johns Hopkins undergraduate biomedical engineering student team headed by Indian American Piyush Poddar that devised a two-part system to improve the way life-saving shocks are delivered to hearts earned first prize in the undergraduate division of a national Collegiate Inventors Competition.

Winners in the Collegiate Inventors Competition, conducted by Invent Now and the National Inventors Hall of Fame, were announced Nov. 12 after the finalist teams presented their projects to contest judges at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va.

The OneStart Americas competition, a partnership between Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable and SR One, the venture capital arm of GlaxoSmithKline, officially launched on November 4 at UCSF. The kick-off event was followed by similar events held this month in Los Angeles, San Diego and Boston.

OneStart Americas invites individuals or teams of burgeoning life science entrepreneurs under 36 years of age to apply in one of four tracks: drug discovery, medical devices, diagnostics, or health information technology. 35 selected semi-finalists will undergo two-months of extensive mentorship from venture capitalists, pharmaceutical executives, and other entrepreneurs in order to turn their idea into a comprehensive business plan.

Eight former pro football players learned this year that they have signs of a degenerative brain disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition linked to depression, dementia, and memory loss. These somber findings were uncovered using a new method of brain imaging that, for the first time, enables researchers to spot signs of the condition in the living brain. Previously CTE could only be identified after a victim died.

The new method could help quantify the risks of repetitive blows to the head (see “Images of a Hard-Hitting Disease” and “Military Brains Donated for Trauma Research”). It could also help future players avoid the degenerative and sometimes lethal condition by limiting their exposure, and it may help scientists develop better protective gear and treatments.

FRANCIS S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has been distributing a chart that shows the success rate of grant applications to NIH for scientific research. While the rate was about 30 percent as recently as a decade ago, it has plunged to about 15 percent, which Dr. Collins says is the lowest in history. One reason for this is that more applicants are seeking funds, but the budget squeeze also is to blame. Dr. Collins is worried that the low success rate will cause young scientists and researchers to abandon the laboratory for other careers or to take their talents and ideas to other countries.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc.’s U.S. Health and Human Services contract to help produce flu vaccines in the event of a pandemic are key to the firm’s expansion, Chief Financial Officer Robert G. Kramer says.

The Baltimore Development Corp. on Wednesday confirmed that it is offering a second $250,000 new job creation tax incentive to Emergent.

In support of the Christie Administration’s commitment to nurturing the growth of emerging technology and biotechnology businesses, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) announced that 65 companies have been approved to share the $60 million allocation available through the State’s Technology Business Tax Certificate Transfer Program in Fiscal Year 2013.

This competitive program enables technology and biotechnology companies to sell New Jersey tax losses and/or research and development tax credits to raise cash to finance their growth and operations. Since the program was established in 1999, more than 500 businesses have been approved for awards totaling $710 million. Each of the 65 applicants approved this year will receive an estimated $920,000, which is 15 percent more than last year and over double the Fiscal Year 2011 average.