Health

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released its final version of rules that define the parameters under which physicians and hospitals can qualify for funding to upgrade their electronic medical records systems. Included are new definitions for what will constitute "meaningful use"...

As healthcare professionals rely more on electronic medical records, tests, images, videos and other multimedia files, high-speed broadband networks have increasingly become a necessary way to transfer and move this data. Unfortunately, however, rural hospitals and clinics have had a difficult time...

Personal computing altered the world forever, and now the digitization of biology is poised to bring about sweeping change. Craig Venter's recent announcement of the first synthetic genome was a huge milestone, but many outside of Silicon Valley remain unaware of the "do-it-yourself biology" movemen...

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., say they have created the first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell using man-made DNA. The 15-year, $40 million project consisted of synthesizing more than 1 million base pair chromosomes of a genome. The knowledge gained from th...

A mind-controlled robotic arm is bringing new independence to an Austrian man who lost his arms, even allowing him to drive a car, the arm's maker announced earlier this week. Created by the German firm Otto Bock HealthCare, the arm has allowed 23-year-old Christian Kandlbauer to pass a driving test...

During his homily this Easter, Pope Benedict argued that medical science, in trying to defeat death, is leading humanity toward likely condemnation. It's a position at odds with the value of life, one that the Church will likely revise years from now, replaying the institution's embarrassment over c...

Up to now, devices designed to measure and enhance signals routed through brain circuitry have been hampered by the complexities of the folded surface of brain tissue. However, scientists have announced the development of a brain implant that conforms so closely to the brain's surface, it "essential...

If the Department of Homeland Security has its way, cellphones will soon do more than transmit calls, GPS information and a host of data from the Web. They'll also monitor the air for toxic substances that could be part of a chemical warfare attack. Just as antivirus software springs to life when it...

There is now proof that a Nobel Prize-winning technology can deliver targeted therapy directly to cancer tumor cells, say a team of California Institute of Technology researchers led by Mark Davis, who published their findings in Nature. Their clinical trial showed that a specialized polymer nanopar...

I had planned on using Hayden Hamilton, founder of the Portland, Oregon-based ProgressiveRx.com, as my source for updates on how things were going in Washington with healthcare reform -- especially regarding any technology-driven solutions to spiraling healthcare costs. After all, Progressive is an ...

Good things come in small packages, as the saying goes, and nowhere is that more true than in nanotechnology. Research in the field has recently led to several new strategies for employing nanotechnology in the fight against cancer, and -- so far, at least -- the results are promising. One of the ha...

Viruses have long been the bane of the medical world. For centuries, healthcare experts have struggled to treat everything from virus-induced sniffles to lethal epidemics. At the very core of the problem is the constant emergence of new viruses and the continuous flux of old ones. It doesn't help th...

The Personalized Medicine World Conference in Silicon Valley last week showcased huge opportunities for new advances in medicine and personalized health. What remained unclear was who will take the lead, what techniques or products will win, and whether the medical establishment will go along or st...

Heart attacks are as American as hot dogs and easily more common than fast-food joints. While changes in the nation's diet are slowly under way to pre-empt the disease, scientists are scrambling to find ways to treat or cure it, in the hope of reducing the swelling numbers added daily to the body co...

Every hour of TV viewing increases your chances of an early death, according to a new study by Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Every one-hour program you sit through raises your odds for dying from heart attack or stroke by 18 percent, from cancer by 9 percent, and fr...

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