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

Entrepreneurs in the minimally invasive surgery space might wait 12 years for their product to become profitable, but there’s another costly bottom line as well: patient’s well being. While medical technology waits for government approval and adoption by healthcare providers, patients wait as well. Because technological development [...]

The National Institutes of Health proposed new conflict-of-interest rules today that will do nothing to limit financial ties between government-funded researchers and private industry and leaves university administrators in charge of policing the arrangements.The 112-pageproposed rule, which was years in the making, did lower the threshold for reporting conflicts of interest to $5,000 from $10,000. [...]

University Hospitals and Summa Health System in Ohio, and Fairview Health Services in Minnesota are among 19 members of an accountable care organization collaborative launched today by healthcare alliance Premier Inc.The “implementation” collaborative to which these hospitals belong is one of two being started by Premier, a hospital-owned company in Charlotte, North Carolina, that until [...]

A tax credit created by healthcare reform law to speed new therapies to market could present significant financial opportunities for small biotechnology companies.The 50-percent Investment Credit for Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Projects would “encourage investments in new breakthrough medical therapies to prevent, diagnose, and treat acute and chronic diseases,” according to a Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) [...]

The Food & Drug Administration is looking to cut down on the number of accidental radiation overdoses by changing the way new radiation-emitting therapies make it to market.The federal watchdog agency sent out a letter to manufacturers today, reporting that it received 1,200 reports between 1999 and 2010 about devices that deliver [...]

Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are two of four institutions to each win a $15 million grant from the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects Program.Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the program supports [...]

As the dust settles on the Great Health Care Reform Bill of 2010 passage in Congress, it’s time to ask what we got for the effort. No matter what people thought of the bill before, like it or not, it’s here.Still, few people really understand what the bill contains and when [...]

President Barack Obama found a point man for critical healthcare reform initiatives including comparative effectiveness research and cost-control, nominating Dr. Donald Berwick to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.Several reports, linked to White House officials, point to Berwick, a Harvard medical school professor, pediatrician, and president and [...]

Four Ohio organizations will receive a total of $19 million in federal funding to train workers for jobs in the health care industry. The funding comes from last year’s federal stimulus act and will be distributed by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The Food & Drug Administration issued warnings to Millipore Corp. and Cardiac Sciences Corp. and a Class I recall to Synthes USA. The FDA has concerns about one company’s diagnostic equipment, and malfunctioning defibrillators and vertebral implants from the other two companies.