MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Prognosis for post-reform healthcare not good. A survey of 3,000 physicians by Thomson Reuters and HCPlexus, which makes management products for physicians, found they are pessimistic about the healthcare overhaul law, with 65 percent saying it will contribute to a worsening of healthcare quality over the next five years, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Hospitals to become socially networked. Venture investor Brook Byers of KPCB said hospitals, patients and other health care providers will be connected in giant online networks like Facebook and Twitter in 10 years, according to PE Hub.
Healthcare repeal’s flashy start. The House voted to repeal healthcare reform as expected. Now expect two years of political theater, committee hearings and attempts to undercut President Obama’s healthcare reform legislation.
Republicans promise to hold a series of hearings and oversight investigations into the law, attempt to repeal individual provisions and craft an alternative health care plan. Some of the first issues they will tackle are the cost of the law, the mandate on larger employers to provide coverage and the impact of the legislation on the states.
But the GOP is expected to be thwarted at every turn by the Democratic-controlled Senate ’ and ultimately President Barack Obama, who has said he is willing to ’improve’ the law but ’we can’t go backward.’
’This is not symbolic,’ Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said on the floor. ’This is why we were sent here, and we will not stop until we put a president in a position in the White House who will repeal this bill. … Make no mistake, we are here to stay and our resolve is firm.’
Democrats dismissed the effort as a ’political farce,’ confident ’ at least for the next two years ’ that the law is safe.
Will enough of the “good” parts of healthcare reform advance to the point where opponents of the bill could lose popular support?
Vorapaxar‘s bloody end. Merck has stopped its study of the stroke drug vorapaxar because it increased the risk of bleeding in patients.
A blood test for Alzheimer’s?. Two major developments in Alzheimer’s research include a possible blood test to screen the general population.
Nursing shifts could be deadly. Patients are more likely to die of pneumonia and heart attack in places where nurses work long hours. Here’s the scariest part: most nurses now work 12-hours shifts, which the study’s authors claim help leads to sleep deprivation.
Pharma iPhone apps. Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Merck have all pulled some apps from the Apple AppStore. But some existing pharma-made iPhone apps include one from Bayer to help hemophiliacs, Boehringer Ingelheim’s stroke app and Merck’s diabetes app.
Inhaled insulin: The White Whale. New setbacks — of up to two years — for Mannkind Corp. (NSDQ:MNKD) a developer of inhalable insulin.
Donations and investments. Finland is investing $6.7 million in biomedical IT while the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center received a $150 million donation for its Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy from the president of the United Arab Emirates.
Material from MedCity News was used in this report.
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