News Archive

When Milton Wright III got his third cancer diagnosis, he cried until he laughed. He was 20 and had survived leukemia twice before, first when he was eight and again as a teen. Each time he’d suffered through years of punishing chemotherapy.

But now he had checked himself in to Seattle Children’s Hospital. An aspiring model, he had taken a fall before a photo shoot and found he couldn’t shake off the pain in his ribs. When the doctors started preparing him for a spinal tap, he knew the cancer was back. “I said, Oh, man, they are going to tell me I relapsed again,” he recalls. “They’re going to give me my six months.”

Secretary of Commerce Mike Gill is looking for an energetic and focused individual to lead the State’s activities in the life sciences arena. This is a highly collaborative role. Its objective is to advance Maryland as the premier center for biotechnology innovation and entrepreneurial vitality in the nation. The position is based within the Department of Business and Economic Development, and reports to the Managing Director of Business and Industry Sector Development.

MedCity ENGAGE has quickly become a destination for fresh thinking and the latest solutions for patient engagement and healthcare delivery. That’s due in large part to speakers who are both established and up-and-coming leaders, and includes those in the trenches of healthcare.

Here are just some of the ENGAGE speakers, who will cover an array of topics that will make you better able to implement your own patient engagement solutions.

The State Entrepreneurship Index tracks core trends and reflects states’ entrepreneurship environments, growth in business formation and technological innovation. Each state index is calculated by comparing five key economic components and determining how much their performance deviate above or below the “median state,” which is assigned a value of 1.0.

Medicare and Medicaid, the two mainstays of government health insurance, turn 50 this month, having made it possible for most Americans in poverty and old age to get medical care. While the Affordable Care Act fills the gap for people who don’t qualify for help from those two programs, there are important improvements still needed in both Medicare and Medicaid.

At the time the two programs were enacted in July 1965, advocates of Medicare, which today covers 46 million Americans over the age of 65 and nine million younger disabled people, expected that it would expand to cover virtually all Americans. Although polls between 1999 and 2009 showed consistent majorities in favor of expanding Medicare to people between the ages of 55 and 64 to cover more of the uninsured, it never happened.

Scientists may apply online until September 22, 2015 at http://www.openinnovationinscience.at for the ‘Lab for Open Innovation in Science’ continuing studies programme taking place in Vienna. 

Health sciences’ two greatest challenges are the lack of incentives for investigating new research questions and the complexity of current research findings, according to a recent survey of international researchers and scientists conducted by the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG). These findings provided the impetus for launching the LBG’s  Tell us! crowdsourcing project in their Open Innovation in Science initiative. This initiative invites patients, families, and professionals to actively contribute to the development of scientific research questions in the field of mental illness. Findings from this unique research approach will impact the world’s first educational programme for the application of Open Innovation in science, known as ‘Lab for Open Innovation in Science’ (LOIS).

A process that accelerates the separation of bacteria could be the answer to the food industry’s prayers.

Food contamination, which refers to the presence of unwanted chemicals and bacteria in food, has been plastered across the news lately. Dozens of products have been recalled in the past 60 days. For example, Blue Bell Creameries had a massive recall of all ice cream products due to an April listeria outbreak, according to the FDA’s website.

Over the past two weeks, in their respective FY 2016 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies appropriations bills (known as Labor-H), House and Senate appropriators have shown support for biomedical research funding by recommending NIH budget levels higher than even the Administration had requested. But controversy still reigns over other parts of the bill, particularly patient-centered outcomes research associated with the Affordable Care Act.

REDI…SET…WATCH…5 Questions with Michael Stiefvater, Business Development Manager at Rockville REDI