Google’s Knowledge Graph is quickly becoming one of the key features of the company’s search engine and today, the company added yet another area of information to the project. Starting now, users who search for medications will see a box with key facts about them in the right-hand sidebar of Google Search. This data, Google says, comes from the U.S. FDA, the National Library of Medicine and the… → Read More
QuantiaMD, one of a growing number of companies attempting to build the LinkedIn for the medical community, today announced that it has raised $12 million in venture financing from Fuse Capital. The expansion round is the company’s largest raise to date and brings its total outside investment to $27 million. → Read More
When I’m not writing for TechCrunch, my “day job” is working with healthcare providers the disruptive innovators who are reinventing healthcare and slaying the healthcare cost beast as a byproduct. In some cases, these are entrepreneurs. In most other cases, they are pioneers within existing healthcare providers fighting to make changes within otherwise slow-moving organizations. → Read More
Today, I participated in a meeting at the White House described as an “expert roundtable on patient access to health data” hosted by Todd Park (Chief Technology Officer of the United States), Farzad Mostashari (the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology), Leon Rodriguez (Office of Civil Rights) and Peter Levin (CTO Veterans Administration).
Being at the White House within a… → Read More
This is the second part in a two-part series on strategic investors in healthcare.
Healthcare IT departments have focused much of their attention on the $19 billion portion of the stimulus bill that is providing billions of subsidies for the adoption of electronic health records. While this is logical given the available money, it is paying for health IT systems optimized for the “do more, bill… → Read More
Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal & relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist. Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture’s healthcare practice and founder of Microsoft’s Health platform business. You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave. Pharmaceutical companies are in trouble… → Read More
I know of no industry where technology is as despised as it is in healthcare. It’s telling that it took government money to incentivize healthcare providers to finally do what virtually every other industry has done — apply information technology to streamline processes. “Established technology is being given a federally funded new lease on life,” athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush said. “Traditional… → Read More
In the New Yorker, Dr. Atul Gawande outlined how, at the turn of the 20th century, more than forty per cent of household income went to paying for food and food production consumed nearly half the workforce. Starting in Texas, a wide array of new methods of food production were tested. Long story short, food now accounts for 8% of household budgets and 2% of the workforce. As a wide array of small… → Read More
While sitting in my dentist’s chair recently, I marveled at just how scary looking many of the implements on his tray were. And don’t get me started on that contraption I put my face into at the optometrists! It’s hard to believe that these implements of modern medicine will some day appear as quaint — and arguably as effective — as instruments of yore, like the “artificial leech” pictured here. → Read More
Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who have been researching AIDS for almost a decade, have come up with a novel new way to fight the immunovirus. Traditional vaccines didn’t seem to be working, so Dr. Philip Johnson, chief scientific officer at Children’s Hospital, shifted gears, and used muscles to deliver a gene in order to create a protein that interferes with the… → Read More
It’s pretty easy, in this day and age, to get frustrated with technology, and lose sight of how awesome our world is as a result of technological innovation. Every now and then some piece of news will come along to remind us of how great technology can be, leading us on an adventure of knowledge, and restoring our appreciation for science. Today, that news is word that the 50,000th pacemaker has… → Read More
What’s this, the iPhone actually being used to improve people’s lives? I’m speechless. There’s a new App in the App Store called Allscripts Remote that allows doctors to remotely access a patient’s medical records right from his or her iPhone (or iPod touch). The idea is that, in an emergency, a doctor won’t have to wait around while the hospital staff pulls up a patient’s records. So if you’re… → Read More
Someone decided to be clever and actually put technology to good use (as opposed to pouring endless amounts of money into developing bigger and bigger TVs), having developed a refrigerator of sorts that doesn’t require any electricity to operate. A team at Stanford, funded by a VC dude by the name of Adam Grosser, came up with a device that essentially works like a big hand warmer, but in… → Read More
Must everything begin with an “i” because it’s getting a bit dull and the sheep might think Apple invented it? Philips has announced the development of an “intelligent pill” that they plan to present at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists this month in Atlanta. The magically delicious iPill includes a microprocessor, battery, wireless radio, pump and a reservoir of… → Read More
There’s an experimental necklace developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology that reminds you to take your medicine. Users must first ingest a special pill, along with your other pills, that contains a small magnet, which then activates the necklace. The necklace then records when, exactly, you swallowed the pills. That way, your nurse or caregiver can know when, or if, you’ve… → Read More
A new prosthetic hand is being tested in Germany right now that has individual movable fingers that are nimble enough to type on a keyboard. It’s also sensitive enough to pressure that one using it can pick up a styrofoam cup without crushing it, something not possible before. It’s still in the prototype stage, but the company behind the hand, Touch Bionics, is now looking for a… → Read More
I bet we’ll start to see more and more of these types of stories in the next two to three years. Apparently two British men have received successful eye operations that have restored their sight. I saw another story on a 60 Minutes-type show (might have actually been 60 Minutes) about a guy in Colorado (maybe it was California) that got a similar operation and then wondered if he was better… → Read More
We all have hobbies. I like to take photos of my friends getting drunk and looking good. I also play Xbox. Many people, though, tinker in their garages, these endeavors bringing us The Clapper, Rollerblades, and many things you see on late-night infomercials. Or you could cure cancer, as John Kanzius is doing now. Kanzius has developed a machine that uses radio waves and nanoparticles to destroy… → Read More
[photopress:0_61_071101_newt_limbs.jpg,full,center] You know that neat trick salamanders do, where if you cut off one of their legs they can just grow it back? Scienticians are working on making things work like that for humans. Turns out the human body is actually wired in some ways to heal like that, and strides have been made in stem cell research to have people actually grow back lost fingers. → Read More
This is exciting for me; when I was studying Neuroscience I wrote a paper on Vision Substitution Systems. Well, now the Boston Retinal Implant Program seem to actually have a prototype (for a different kind of blindness, but still) for a retina replacement device. Basically, it’s a freaking bionic eye. The device is really cool, and it has to be waterproof, durable enough to last ten years… → Read More
[photopress:geico_gecko_1.jpg,full,center] That little piece of catfood that sells Geico insurance with a smug Brit accent just might be the key to fast surgery recoveries in the future. Scienticians have found a way to use the same science that lets geckos climb along the celing to help heal surgical wounds. A bandage is made of the new material which binds the incisions together and slowly… → Read More
India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research is taking a cue from open source initiatives that you and I know so well and applying those same ideals to third world drug research in the hopes of developing cures for diseases "at a fraction of the costs incurred by multinationals to develop a new drug." → Read More
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how this is scientifically possible, take a moment to read the following quote: “The researchers say their findings could have practical applications, such as helping take video games to the next level of virtuality so the players feel as if they are actually inside the game.” Wow…so this is what Wii 2 will be like. → Read More
A bit old in the blogosphere, but still a goodie, the $500 Thinklabs ds32a Digital Stethoscope comes with a 2GB iPod Nano and special recording attachment that allows you to record the sweet beats of your patient’s heart. The stethoscope technically will work with any recording device that has line-in or mic inputs. However, Thinklabs prefers the iPod Nano because of it’s interface and… → Read More
It seems that every time we step out of the CrunchGear Mansion, sore muscles and sports injuries pour cold water on our outdoor field frolicking. Thank goodness for Game Ready—probably the best thing to happen to sports injuries since the cup. This high-tech update to the old-school adage of “keep it cold and keep it compressed” promises sore spot healing and speedy surgery recovery. The… → Read More
It has long been the intention of chemists to develop ways to tailor medicines specifically to peoples’ genetics. While that’s still a long ways off, new developments in pharmacology are opening doors for patients that were previously inconceivable. One such development is the AmpliChip from Roche. It can analyze a person’s genetic makeup and ascertain whether a particular… → Read More
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