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Biomedical research advances through new Australian Institute

The Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology (BMET) will be officially opened this evening at the University of Sydney, and will significantly advance this highly multidisciplinary research for life sciences and medicine.

14 Mar 2012

Drive to make school nurses more accessible and confidential: UK

As part of a scheme by the Department of Health students may be getting to know their school nurses better. Using technology such as text messaging, emails and mobile phone apps to contact their school nurse could be used to overcome problems of setting up appointments.

14 Mar 2012

GOP fissures likely to emerge with efforts to revamp budget deal, Medicare

House Republicans appear divided over whether to push for deeper spending cuts in the 2013 budget plan than those agreed upon during last year's debt ceiling deal. Democrats and Republicans are also preparing for a Medicare fight. Meanwhile, some GOP senators have requested a hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to discuss revised cost estimates for the health law.

14 Mar 2012

Kenya, Tanzania face ongoing health worker strikes

About 2,000 Kenyan health workers attended a demonstration outside the Ministry of Health on Friday, the Associated Press/Seattle Times reports, noting, "Some 40,000 health workers nationwide went on strike on March 1 to protest low pay and poor working conditions."

14 Mar 2012

Romney, now 65, won't enroll in Medicare

Instead, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney will buy private health insurance. News reports describe this step as Romney's effort to make a political point. He supports transforming Medicare into a premium support program and has taken the position that wealthier seniors should pay more for their Medicare benefits.

14 Mar 2012

Florida Hospital purchases Mazor Robotics' Renaissance system

Mazor Robotics Ltd, the leader in innovative surgical robots and complementary products for spine surgery, announced that Florida Hospital has purchased a Renaissance system.

13 Mar 2012

Feds reject J & J's $1 billion drug settlement

Prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have rejected a roughly $1 billion proposed settlement to resolve allegations that Johnson & Johnson promoted the antipsychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses, according to people familiar with the matter.

13 Mar 2012

Quality issues: Patient safety and physicians' well-being

Medscape investigates the intersection between patient safety initiatives and how physicians practice medicine.

13 Mar 2012

Health program cuts, cost-saving measures big issues at state capitols

Legislatures around the country are dealing with changes or cost-saving measures to health programs as they consider their budgets.

13 Mar 2012

Feds won't renew $30 million funding for Texas' women's health program

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius confirmed Friday that the federal government would stop funding the program which provides health care to more than 100,000 women after Texas barred Planned Parenthood and other "affiliates of abortion providers" from participating. Gov. Rick Perry has pledged to replace the money, but has not said where it would come from.

13 Mar 2012

New York Times Magazine examines 'medical brain drain'

"[T]he United States, with its high salaries and technological innovation, is ... the world's most powerful magnet for doctors, attracting more every year than Britain, Canada and Australia -- the next most popular destinations for migrating doctors -- combined," the New York Times Magazine reports in a story on how the promise of a better salary and working conditions is drawing newly trained doctors away from their countries to the U.S.

13 Mar 2012

Diacetylmorphine more cost-effective than MMT in treating street heroin users

Medically prescribed heroin is more cost-effective than methadone for treating long-term street heroin users, according to a new study by researchers at Providence Health Care and the University of British Columbia.

13 Mar 2012

Santorum's message: Romney would face trouble against Obama on health issues

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum continues to attack rival Mitt Romney's Massachusetts' health reform record, arguing that it weakens his ability to run against President Barack Obama, and candidate Newt Gingrich also is not escaping the criticism.

13 Mar 2012

Global Fund donors 'earmark' funds for capacity-building, Fund's general manager says

Gabriel Jaramillo, the general manager of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said in an interview on Friday that "quite a few donors" to the fund "have earmarked portions of their donations to us, their contributions, to capacity-building," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports.

13 Mar 2012

HHS releases exchange rules, highlights 'state flexibility'

The Department of Health and Human Services today released the final rule for health insurance exchanges, which reportedly includes specifics about state functions and responsibilities.

13 Mar 2012

FAO calls for nearly $70M in additional aid for Sahel households threatened by drought

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) "on Friday appealed for an extra $69.8 million to aid 790,000 vulnerable households in the drought-hit Sahel region in West Africa," Agence France-Presse/Vanguard reports.

13 Mar 2012

Scientists at Seattle conference discuss progress, obstacles in fight against HIV/AIDS

"Scientists, stymied for decades by the complexity of the human immunodeficiency virus, are making progress on several fronts in the search for a cure for HIV infections," but "a major stumbling block is the fact that HIV lies low in pools or reservoirs of latent infection that even powerful drugs cannot reach, scientists told the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, one of the world's largest scientific meetings on HIV/AIDS," in Seattle last week, Reuters reports.

13 Mar 2012

Supreme Court health law action: Analyzing the arguments and who will be making them

News outlets report on the key issues, dynamics and personalities that will be in play when the Supreme Court takes up the health law.

13 Mar 2012

Women in the World summit panel discusses using technology to solve global health problems

The Daily Beast reports on a panel discussion at the third Women in the World summit on Friday in which Barbara Bush, CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps, and Gabi Zedlmayer, head of Hewlett-Packard's (HP) global social innovation program, talked about "how to harness technology to solve world health problems."

13 Mar 2012

Syrian government to allow U.N. to conduct survey of basic medical needs in 4 crisis-hit areas

"The Syrian government will allow the United Nations to assess the basic medical needs of Syrians in four areas where opposition forces have clashed with government troops and to also carry out a preliminary humanitarian needs assessment, officials said Friday," the Associated Press/Huffington Post reports.

13 Mar 2012