Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

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A 'Slow Catastrophe' Unfolds as the Golden Age of Antibiotics Comes to an End

Melissa Healy | Los Angeles Times | July 11, 2016

In early April, experts at a military lab outside Washington intensified their search for evidence that a dangerous new biological threat had penetrated the nation’s borders. They didn’t have to hunt long before they found it. On May 18, a team working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research here had its first look at a sample of the bacterium Escherichia coli, taken from a 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania. She had a urinary tract infection with a disconcerting knack for surviving the assaults of antibiotic medications. Her sample was one of six from across the country delivered to the lab of microbiologist Patrick McGann...

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A Bionic Eye That Restores Sight

Rachel E. Gross | The Atlantic | August 31, 2014

By bridging the gap between eye and brain, a new device has the capacity to help the blind regain their vision...

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A Bionic, Mind-Controlled Arm, From The Inventor Of The Segway

Olga Khazan | The Atlantic | May 12, 2014

The FDA just approved a prosthetic arm that amputees can control with their brains...

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A Buffet Of Health Data

Aman Bhandari | HealthData.gov | September 18, 2012

Hundreds of codeathons are held throughout this country every year resulting in the development of innovative applications, like the “Like” button on Facebook, or solutions to critical social and health problems, like childhood obesity. Read More »

A Few Ways The Government Shutdown Could Harm Your Health (And The World’s)

Maryn McKenna | Wired | October 1, 2013

There’s going to be a lot — a lot — of coverage today on the federal shutdown, what it means and how long it might go on. I thought it might be worth quickly highlighting how it affects the parts of the government that readers here care most about: public health, global health, food safety and the spread of scary diseases. Read More »

A Holistic View Of Evidence-Based Medicine: Of Horse, Cart And Whip

David Katz | The Huffington Post | May 2, 2014

...The Cleveland Clinic has recently introduced the use of herbal medicines as an option for its patients, generating considerable media attention...One might argue, from the perspective of evidence based medicine, that harsh treatment is warranted for everything operating under the banner of "alternative" medicine, or any of the nomenclature alternative to "alternative" -- such as complementary, holistic, traditional, or integrative...

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A New Drug In The Age Of Antibiotic Resistance

Cari Romm | The Atlantic | January 7, 2015

Two alarming figures from a report released last month by the U.K. government: By 2050, antibiotic resistance will cost the world a projected 10 million lives and $8 trillion each year...

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A Real Stand Against Antibiotic Resistance Starts At The Farm, Not The Hospital

Arielle Duhaime-Ross | The Verge | September 30, 2014

The US government made history on September 18th when President Obama signed an executive order establishing a task force to combat antibiotic resistance at the federal level. The order outlined general goals such as tracking the use of antibiotics and creating incentives for drug development. Some applauded the announcement, while pointing out other countries’ continued failure to do the same...

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A Searing New Report Claims Opioid Drugmakers Spent 8 Times as Much as the NRA on Lobbying

Erin Brodwin | Business Insider | September 19, 2016

A searing new report from the Associated Press claims that the makers of opioid painkillers, the dangerous drugs at the center of the tragic overdose crisis, outspent the US gun lobby on lobbying and campaign contributions by 8:1. The report looked at the period from 2006 to 2015, when deaths from the drugs began to skyrocket. Here are some of its most striking findings...

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A Stethoscope That Can See

Eleanor Smith | The Atlantic | April 16, 2014

A new tool lets doctors turn sound waves into graphs.

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ABLE, DUKE And OSHL Conduct Workshop On Meeting The Challenges Of Developing New Anticancer Therapies

Press Release | Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE), Duke University , Open Source Health Laboratories (OSHL) | September 17, 2012

Strategic planning, clinical trial initiatives, translational research, and regulatory elements of the drug development process were discussed

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Affordable COVID-19 Diagnoses for Hospitals: How Open Source Software Helps

The most common COVID-19 symptoms—such as coughing, fever, and shortness of breath—are shared with many other diseases. Diagnosing a patient accurately is therefore a challenge. Although a diagnosis of COVID-19 might not affect treatment, it would help a hospital predict a patient's trajectory and anticipate the need for urgent intervention. But current tests, relying on blood or mucus samples, are not particularly accurate. In this article, we'll see how open source software can help hospitals make better diagnoses. I'll concentrate on one specific role, and on the ways open source facilitates finding a solution and keeping it affordable. Many aspects of the problem feed into the solution discussed here. The article is based on work by researcher Trevor Grant.

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AHRQ Announces Health IT Research Funding Opportunities

Sara Heath | EHR Intelligence | April 1, 2016

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will be sponsoring research projects geared toward bettering health information technology, according to a public statement. Specifically, the agency seeks to support research for improving the safety of health IT to better inform policymakers at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Food and Drug Administration, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)...

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AirStrip, Humetrix and others advise Congress on FDA, FTC, HIPAA

Jonah Comstock | Mobi Health News | July 13, 2016

At a congressional hearing on mobile medical apps today, experts from different sectors of the industry weighed in on the ways they think federal regulation needs to change to create a robust digital health industry while still protecting the safety and wellbeing of patients. The conversation spanned various regulatory bodies and federal programs including HIPAA, the FDA, the FTC, and Medicare. “The regulatory framework for most of these apps is complicated and in some cases troubling,” Nicolas Terry, a law professor at Indiana University said in his prepared testimony. “Here, the oversimplified binary of regulation versus innovation is a poor frame...

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Alzheimer's 'Could Bankrupt Nations'

Chris Higgins | Wired UK | April 29, 2014

"We're looking at the first disease in modern history that has the potential to bankrupt nations," said Elli Kaplan at Wired Health this morning.  She was talking about Alzheimer's disease, which every six seconds is developed by another human being.

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