Doctors attempt first ever stem cell treatment for stroke patient. Doctors in Scotland injected stem cells into a man’s brain in an attempt to treat the disabilities that resulted from a stroke, according to the BBC.
Senators prepare to “shed some light” on Berwick’s vision of health reform. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told Politico that the public doesn’t have "any insight" on what Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Donald Berwick thinks about "some of the biggest changes in the history of modern health care."
Study: Defibrillators better off in public than hospitals. Automated external defibrillators actually increase the risk of patients dying in hospitals, but double the chances a heart attack victims’ survival in public places, according to The LA Times. Yesterday, the Food & Drug Administration announced a program to fix persistent problems with AEDs.
Universal Health Services buys rival. Universal Health Services Inc. in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, has acquired rival Psychiatric Solutions Inc. for $3.1 billion, making the now $7 billion company the country’s largest owner of freestanding inpatient psychiatric facilities, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
AstraZeneca shopping medical device unit. AstraZeneca Plc is seeking to sell Astra Tech, a Swedish unit that makes dental implants and medical devices, for about $2 billion, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.
$1B-worth of help for small biotechs. In all, 2,923 companies in 47 states and the District of Columbia received 4,606 Therapeutic Discovery Project Program awards, for a total of $1 billion in grants and tax credits for biomedical research through the program created by health reform law, according to American Medical News.
Cerulean raises $24M for nanoparticle drugs. Cambridge, Mass.-based Cerulean Pharmaceuticals, has closed a $24 million Series C funding round to fuel development of nanoparticle drugs, the first of which is aimed at fighting lung cancer, reports Xconomy Boston.
You say Coumadin, I say Xarelto. A new blood thinner, rivaroxaban (Xarelto), made by Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development and Bayer Healthcare, might be a viable alternative to warfarin (Coumadin), the decades-old standard for treating patients with atrial fibrillation, according to Drugs.com.
Seniors need medical homes, too. A lot of data could be mined from electronic health records to identify best practices, enable the FDA to measure outcomes in the new Sentinel program, and provide doctors at the point-of-prescribing alerts that will help optimize drug choices (and lower costs) for senior patients, according to Dr. Jerry Avorn in a HEALTHpopuli blog report.
Hurdles ahead for medical home. Provisions of new federal health care reforms will move the country toward a primary care medical home for patients, but the nation may not have enough primary care doctors to handle the workload, according to a study by the University of Michigan Health System.
Material from MedCity News was used in this report.
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