NIH and Lilly Collaborate, Aim to Make Drug Development Pipelines More Productive

April 2, 2012 | by

Over the past decade, collaborative research efforts to support the discovery and development of medicines has increased dramatically. Last month, the National Institutes of Health and Eli Lilly and Company announced a new collaboration: they will generate a publicly available resource to profile the effects of thousands of approved and investigational medicines in a variety of advanced disease-relevant testing systems [1]. In-depth knowledge of the biological profiles of these medicines may enable researchers to better predict treatment outcomes, improve drug development, and lead to more specific and effective approaches.

NCATS/Lilly collaboration

Qualcomm Life Focuses on Wireless Medical Device Connectivity

December 5, 2011 | by

Mobile technology company Qualcomm announced today the formation of a new subsidiary, Qualcomm Life. The subsidiary will run the company’s former Wireless Health business. Qualcomm Life was unveiled today at the mHealth Summit in Washington D.C. As part of the launch, Qualcomm presented the 2net hub, a mobile device designed to plug into a wall socket and provide connectivity for a wide range of medical devices. The 2net platform allows for the wireless transmission of health data from medical devices to various locations, such as a hospital or doctor’s office.

Qualcomm Life

Over 40 medical device manufacturers, application developers, health care services companies and payors are either integrating with or considering the 2net ecosystem.

Qualcomm Life will also establish a $100 million fund, managed by Qualcomm’s venture arm, to invest in wireless technology adoption in the healthcare industry. Desired developments include biosensors, medication compliance, wellness, remote diagnosis or monitoring and analytics.

According to Rick Valencia, vice president and general manager of Qualcomm Life:

Qualcomm Life was founded, in part, to assist medical device manufacturers who approached Qualcomm for help when their own wireless connectivity attempts became untenable due to technology selection errors, unscalable deployment models and prohibitively high operational support costs. Our services, including integration on the 2net platform, remove the burden for medical device manufacturers of a large technical development effort, providing integration with mobile carriers and solving the operational complexities of supporting wireless medical device data in the field.

Source: Qualcomm Life

National Biomedical Research Day 2011

October 21, 2011 | by

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, inventor, entrepreneur, author and pacifist [1]. He was born on October 21st, 1833. After his death in 1896, much of his estate was used to establish the Nobel Prize. In 1993 on the 160th anniversary of Nobel’s birth, President Bill Clinton proclaimed October 21st as “National Biomedical Research Day” [2].

National Biomedical Research Day

On National Biomedical Research Day, we celebrate the central role that biomedical research plays in improving human health and longevity. On this day, we acknowledge the promise that biomedical research plays for securing the future physical and mental well-being of people around the world. Biomedical research not only provides data that scientists and physicians need to treat and prevent diseases, but it also reveals the fundamental nature of life in humans, other animals, and plants.

Brain Stent Fails to Prevent Strokes, NIH Stroke Prevention Trial has Immediate Implications for Clinical Practice

September 19, 2011 | by

Patients at a high risk for a second stroke who received intensive medical treatment had fewer strokes and deaths than patients who received a brain stent in addition to the medical treatment, a large nationwide clinical trial has shown. The investigators published the results in the online first edition of the New England Journal of Medicine [1]. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health, funded the trial. The medical regimen included daily blood-thinning medications and aggressive control of blood pressure and cholesterol.

New enrollment in the study was stopped in April because early data showed significantly more strokes and deaths occurred among the stented patients at the 30-day mark compared to the group who received the medical management alone.

Stent

FDA Revamps Recall Resource, Promotes Food-Safety Awareness

April 29, 2011 | by

The United States has one of the safest food supplies in the world. Nevertheless, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), foodborne disease causes approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the U.S. each year [1] — and that’s just an estimate based on data collected from the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet), other surveillance networks and published studies.

FDA food safety