
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Health care giant Abbott Labs (NYSE:ABT) agreed to a guilty charge and $1.6 billion in criminal and civil fines for charges of illegal marketing for Depakote, part of the pharmaceutical business the company plans to separate from its medical products arm.
"Not only did Abbott engage in off-label promotion," acting associate attorney general Tony West said in prepared remarks, "but it targeted elderly dementia patients and down-played the risks apparent from its own clinical studies."
Depakote has FDA clearance for treatment of epileptic seizures, migraines and bipolar disorder, according to the Washington Post. Abbott admitted, as part of its settlement, that it trained a dedicated sales team to promote the drug to nursing homes for controlling aggression in dementia patients.
Abbott announced plans late last year to split into separate pharmaceutical an medical products businesses, keeping its medical products business under the Abbott banner and creating a new public company from the pharma unit.
The Veterans Affairs Dept. will hand out 1,000 iPads, loaded with health-based apps, to family caregivers in a pilot program set to launch early next year. Read more
If current trends are any indication, more than 40% of Americans may be obese by 2030, and 11% may be "severely obese" – a problem with heavy implications for health care cost containment. Read more
A new study from RAND Corp. finds that market-driven health care plans, not unlike health savings accounts, could have positive short-term effects on health care costs. Read more
Deep brain stimulation with a "brain pacemaker" that sends continuous electrical impulses to specific "memory" regions of the brain, a method already used in some Parkinson’s disease patients, may help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Read more
A study looking at the effects of pollution concludes that heart attack survivors living near highways and heavy traffic areas face a higher 10-year death risk. Read more
A new imaging method already in the 1st phase of clinical testing may do away with conventional X-ray mammography in exchange for light-induced sound radiation detection for breast cancer screening. Read more
A joint venture between MIT and Georgia Tech leads to a method of automatically recording electrical activity inside living neurons in the brain. Read more