A team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US has designed nanoparticles that produce proteins when utraviolet (UV) light shines on them: they suggest the idea could be used to create “nano-factories” that make protein-based drugs at tumor sites to fight cancer…
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Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota announced new appointments to its leadership team Tuesday, three weeks after a management shake-up resulted in three high-level executives leaving the company.

But the changes Eagan-based Blue Cross announced did not include replacements for former Chief Financial Officer Pamela Sedmak or Chief Medical Officer Dr. Greg Gilmet.

The two of them, along with Kathleen Mock, senior vice president of marketing and public and health affairs, left the company without…

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The cost of caring for the elderly in Hawaii is at least 22 percent higher than comparable care on the Mainland, and more than 50 percent higher for skilled nursing care, according to a new survey by Genworth Financial Inc.

The cost of receiving home health care in Hawaii has risen by 2.4 percent each year over the past five years and the hourly cost of a home health aide has gone up by 3.5 percent over the same period of time, according to Genworth’s 2012 Cost of Care Survey.

The median cost…

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Drug dispensing robots designed to quickly prepare intravenous medications in a sterile environment can harbor dangerous bacteria, according to a report in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America…
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John Muir Health, which operates major hospitals in Walnut Creek and Concord, said late Monday it named Irving Pike, M.D., as its first chief medical officer.

The step, effective immediately, appears to be a sign of the nonprofit hospital system’s increased interest in tighter links to its affiliated physicians, as health reform and other factors put pressure on hospitals and physicians nationwide to form closer business and clinical ties.

Pike spent the last 12 years as a physician executive…

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Centene Corp. said late Monday that if its planned formal protest over losing an Ohio Medicaid managed care contract is unsuccessful, it plans to record an impairment charge this year.

Buckeye Community Health Plan, Centene’s Ohio subsidiary, was one of four incumbent firms to be left out of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ award late Friday of the state’s Medicaid managed care business, effective January 2013. Centene said this morning that it plans to file a formal protest of the…

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Scientists at Northwestern University in the US have developed a simple, specialized, star-shaped gold nanoparticle that can deliver drugs directly to the nucleus of a cancer cell. They write about their work in a paper published recently in the journal ACS Nano. Senior author Dr Teri W…
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Americans continue to spend big dollars on medicine. Last year, they shelled out $320 billion on medicines, a jump of 4 percent from $307 billion in 2010, according to a report issued by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

The report — “The Use of Medicines in the United States: Review of 2011″ — also found patients with insurance spent $49 billion out-of-pocket for prescription drugs, a decline of $1.8 billion from 2010. And nearly 75 percent of all prescriptions had a copay of $10…

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Three physicians took the stage at the fourth annual West Coast Life Sciences Meeting Management Forum
to explain to pharma and life sciences planners their perspective on healthcare reform, online versus live
education, and what it takes to get them to participate in medical meetings in today’s increasingly transparent
environment.
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In New Mexico, health follows wealth, a recently published study indicates.

Los Alamos, ranked the wealthiest county in the nation by the U.S. Census Bureau, was also ranked the healthiest county in the nation. Only 15 percent of residents 20 years and older are physically sedentary, compared to the national average of 21 percent physical inactivity, the study said.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin did the study, factoring in education, economic development, clinical…

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