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Analysis: Why Alexa’s bedside manner is bad for health care

Amazon has opened a new health care frontier: Now Alexa can be used to transmit patient data. Using this new feature — which Amazon labeled as a "skill" — a company named Livongo will allow diabetes patients — which it calls "members" — to use the device to "query their last blood sugar reading, blood sugar measurement trends, and receive insights and Health Nudges that are personalized to them."

4 Jun 2019

Childhood adversity can impact brain development and behavior

Growing up in poverty and experiencing traumatic events like a bad accident or sexual assault can impact brain development and behavior in children and young adults.

31 May 2019

Seeing disfigured faces evokes negative behavioral and brain reactions

People with attractive faces are often seen as more trustworthy, socially competent, better adjusted, and more capable in school and work.

30 May 2019

Researchers find new molecular targets for fighting autoimmunity

BRCA--the family of DNA-repair proteins associated with breast, ovarian prostate, and pancreatic cancers--interacts with a multipart, molecular complex that is also responsible for regulating the immune system.

30 May 2019

A final comfort: ‘Palliative transport’ brings dying children home

Anne Brescia sat beside her only child, Anthony, as he lay unconscious in a hospital bed at age 16. Just a few months before, he was competing in a swim meet; now cancer was destroying his brain. Brescia couldn’t save her son. But she was determined to bring him home.

28 May 2019

Newly approved gene therapy for SMA is based on delivery vehicle discovered by Penn expert

James Wilson, MD, PhD, recalls being struck by the devastating toll of rare diseases as a young physician in the 1980s. He set out on a path to correct the genes that cause these conditions, including spinal muscle atrophy (SMA), the most common inherited fatal disease in infants.

25 May 2019

New pain management program sends 92% cancer surgery patients home with no opioids

A specialized pain management program for patients who underwent robotic surgery for urologic cancers resulted in just eight percent going home with narcotics after discharge, compared to 100 percent who would have received them without this enhanced recovery protocol.

23 May 2019

Opioid prescriptions drop sharply among state workers

The agency that manages health care for California's massive state workforce is reporting a major reduction in opioid prescriptions, reflecting a national trend of physicians cutting back on the addictive drugs.

21 May 2019

Penn Medicine launches free, 'self-service' AI tool for data analytics

The Penn Medicine Institute for Biomedical Informatics has launched a free, open-source automated machine learning system for data analysis that is designed for anyone to use, from a high school student looking to gain insight on their baseball team's statistics, to trained researchers looking for associations between cancer and environmental factors.

16 May 2019

‘Living their values’: Palliative care power couple faces cancer at home

In the 18 years that Kathy Brandt and Kim Acquaviva have been together, death has been a constant companion.

15 May 2019

Sales of sugary drinks drop by 38% after beverage tax in Philadelphia

One year after Philadelphia passed its beverage tax, sales of sugary and artificially sweetened beverages dropped by 38 percent in chain food retailers, according to Penn Medicine researchers who conducted one of the largest studies examining the impacts of a beverage tax.

14 May 2019

Dealing with hospital closure, pioneer Kansas town asks: What comes next?

A slight drizzle had begun in the gray December sky outside Community Christian Church as Reta Baker, president of the local hospital, stepped through the doors to join a weekly morning coffee organized by Fort Scott's chamber of commerce.

14 May 2019

General public views use of cognitive enhancers as acceptable practice

The general public largely views the use of cognitive enhancers such as Adderall as an acceptable practice when used by adults in the workplace, suggests a new study from Penn Medicine neurologists, which published this week in AJOB Neuroscience.

13 May 2019

BBI’s SEM Scanner receives a Medtech Innovation Briefing from NICE

The SEM Scanner from BBI Europe Ltd, has received a Medtech Innovation Briefing, part of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence advice.

8 May 2019

New book examines various phases of intervention research in hospice and palliative care

Behavioral Intervention Research in Hospice and Palliative Care: Building an Evidence Base sets forth research considerations and guidelines to build evidence-based interventions to improve end-of-life care.

3 May 2019

Treating cancer patients with personalized, combination therapies improves outcomes

Precision oncology often relies on treating patients with a single, molecularly matched therapy that targets one mutation in their tumor.

23 Apr 2019

Specific strains of Staphylococcus aureus linked to wounds that do not heal

Whether a wound--such as a diabetic foot ulcer--heals or progresses to a worse outcome, including infection or even amputation, may depend on the microbiome within that wound.

19 Apr 2019

New app can predict likelihood of developing incisional hernia after abdominal surgery

A new app can predict the likelihood that a patient will develop an incisional hernia following abdominal surgery, using big data to potentially help address a problem effects one out of every eight of these surgical patients.

12 Apr 2019

Proton therapy shows excellent outcomes, minimal side effects in high-risk neuroblastoma patients

Researchers from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the largest cohort to date of pediatric patients with high-risk neuroblastoma treated with proton radiation therapy, finding both that proton therapy was effective at reducing tumors and demonstrated minimal toxicity to surrounding organs.

10 Apr 2019

Study reveals new insights into genetic drivers of heavy drinking and alcohol use disorder

A large genomic study of nearly 275,000 people led by Penn Medicine researchers revealed new insights into genetic drivers of heavy drinking and alcohol use disorder, the uncontrollable pattern of alcohol use commonly referred to as alcoholism.

2 Apr 2019