Asian markets are increasingly the focus of pharmaceutical companies who are looking for new market opportunities beyond the traditional “rich-world” countries who are facing economic stagnation…
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Several months ago, I saw a young mother with a baby strapped to her in a sling walk through the front doors of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, wander up to the front desk and ask, “What do you guys do?”

The people at the front desk stifled a laugh and clearly weren’t sure what to say. They told her the foundation does a lot of things. They handed her one of the pamphlets sitting on the counter and she wandered away, apparently no more enlightened than when she walked in.

Should the woman come back to visit the foundation next week, she would probably walk away with a better answer after a tour through the brand-new Gates Foundation visitors’ center, opening Feb…

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The Kaiser strike became a numbers game Tuesday afternoon, with different numbers tossed from different sides.

Whether 80 percent walked the line, honored the picket — or crossed the line — depends on who’s talking.

More than 21,000 nurses, mental health providers, optical workers and others were called to strike against Kaiser Permanente Tuesday by three different unions.

The National Union of Healthcare Workers called the one-day strike to draw attention to stalled contract negotiations at bargaining tables across the state…

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The Arizona Department of Health Services has approved Rural/Metro Corp.’s acquisition of Professional Medical Transport and its sister companies in Arizona.

The deal was announced last fall, but has been waiting approval from the state health department.

Today ADHS Director Will Humble approved the deal, but with some qualifications.

“I wanted to make sure this didn’t result in a rate increase,” Humble told the Phoenix Business Journal.

He is not allowing Rural/Metro to increase its rates for three years…

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Officials at Sigma-Aldrich Corp. said today that the company completed its acquisition of BioReliance Holdings Inc. from Avista Capital Partners for $350 million in cash.

St. Louis-based Sigma-Aldrich, a life-science and speciality chemical company, funded the acquisition with a combination of cash on hand and credit facilities. The company announced the deal earlier this month.

Rockville, Md.-based BioReliance Holdings provides biologic, specialized toxicology and animal health testing to companies and employs more than 650 worldwide…

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The Kaiser strike that promised to be the largest walkout in the company’s history — wasn’t.

More than 21,000 nurses, mental health providers, optical workers and others were called to strike Kaiser Permanente Tuesday, but far fewer appeared to have shown up at the picket lines by the middle of the day.

The numbers remain in dispute, however.

Two-thirds of the Kaiser nurses in Northern California crossed the picket line, Kaiser said.

“Nonsense,” countered Chuck Idelson, a spokesman with the California Nurses Association…

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HCA Virginia will put the spurs to its hospital-development plans in Dulles, erecting a $10 million emergency center that will open more than two years ahead of the rest of the hospital, Tim McManus, the company’s regional market president, said Tuesday.

HCA Virginia, which owns Reston Hospital Center, won regulatory approval in 2009 to build the full-service, 164-bed StoneSpring Medical Center at the corner of U.S. Route 50 and Gum Spring Road. However, the hospital is not expected to open until late 2015, and HCA officials wanted to begin offering care there sooner…

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Despite the recession, bioscience jobs are on the increase, according to the Flinn Foundation’s Arizona Bioscience Roadmap update, released today.

The number of bioscience jobs increased by 7.4 percent during the postrecessionary period of 2009-10, compared with a 1.8 percent decline for the state’s overall private sector, according to the annual study conducted by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice.

“Through the most trying economic circumstances of our lifetimes, bio in Arizona more than held its own,” said Walter Plosila, senior adviser to the Battelle practice…

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Oregon’s medical providers collected more than $2.5 million in federal health care grants that helped them install new health record technology systems.

So says the Portland Interhospital Physicians Association, which helps local doctors manage their practices. Some 125 state providers have received health care reform funds intended to defray costs of installing and using new electronic health records.

The money helped “early adopter” physicians add the new systems that will allow them to meet reform-driven requirements…

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Portland Archbishop John G. Vlazny has called a requirement that employers include contraception in their health care plans a “severe assault on religious liberty.”

In a letter written to his “Brothers and Sisters in Christ” and republished by several media outlets, Vlazny took aim at a Jan. 20 Health and Human Services ruling that health insurance plans cover all FDA-approved forms of contraception without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or deductible. Similar letters were written by other U.S…

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