Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

Mayo Clinic is one of six medical research centers in the United States tapped by the National Institutes of Health to study the long-term reactions of human immune systems to diseases and vaccines.NIH hopes the five-year, $100 million effort, funded by the federal stimulus law, will help researchers design better vaccines to treat diseases like [...]

The University of Minnesota’s Biomedical Discovery District has the land. It has the money. Now it will get some serious validation.Next month, the university’s medical school will host the annual conference of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP), a chance for wonks in economic development, innovation and technology transfer to swap best practices and [...]

Mayo Clinic has created a social media center that will train other hospitals in the use of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.Mayo is billing the new venture as “a first-of-its-kind social media center focused on healthcare,” according to a statement from Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo.Mayo has [...]

Alzheimer’s is what I like to call a black hole disease.We don’t know what cures it. We don’t know what causes it. We don’t even know for sure when we have it. The only thing we do know for certain is that you don’t want to get it.The pharmaceutical industry has spent billions of dollars [...]

To improve healthcare in Minnesota, the state is now offering providers a little more than the proverbial pat on the back.Earlier this month, Minnesota health officials launched an incentive-based payment system for hospitals and ambulatory firms who treat state employees and patients enrolled in the state’s health insurance programs.Providers who compare favorably to benchmarks measuring [...]

Can’t we just all get along?Tim Mahoney and Tim Mulcahy share a lot more than their first names and initials. The two men have been allies on everything from angel investment tax credits, the creation of the Minnesota Science & Technology Authority and the need for Minnesota to more fully convert its formidable research assets [...]

Tim Mulcahy’s eyes lit up as the thought suddenly seized him.“Here’s what we can propose,” said Mulcahy, vice president of research at the University of Minnesota. “Perhaps the university is too risk averse in our assessment” of potential startups.“We will make any of those technologies and potential companies that we pass on immediately available for [...]

The much-hyped best hospital rankings from U.S. News and World Report are out again and they look a lot like they did last year.Topping the list once again is Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore — as it has for the last 20 years — followed by Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The only movement in [...]

Merck & Co. is no longer a drug company. Or at least that’s one of its top executives told the Innovations in Diabetes Summit in St. Louis Park, Minnesota Wednesday.Now before you start shorting Merck stock, the company, a longtime stalwart of Big Pharma, is still very much in the business of making pharmaceuticals. It’s [...]

As nurses and Twin Cities hospitals resume contract negotiations today, Moody’s Investor Service lobbed in one more thing for both sides to think about.The company warned Monday that an open-ended strike by 12,000 nurses belonging to the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) could damage the hospitals credit rating, making it harder and more expensive for hospitals [...]