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Microsoft Invests in Barnes and Noble Nook Division So It Appears a Windows 8 Tablet Is In the Works Or Will It Be the Windows Phone OS?
This is a good move probably from both sides and the Nook has been doing well and this might be the tablet jolt that Microsoft needs. I have been a tablet owner since day one and 5 years ago people used to think I was a Goober as I said one day all will be using tablets, and look where we are today…
Harvard Health Teacher Gets Caught With Small Amount of Marijuana in Bermuda
This is an interesting story and could happen to anyone and the amount was small but hopefully she will be able to provide proof to show as medical marijuana. The whole battle over small amounts of marijuana with the federal and state laws some day need to be ironed out. BD HAMILTON, Ber…
“Subsidiary Watch” Tracked With Health Insurance Companies–Just Search Those Words for A Wealth of Information at the Medical Quack–Washington Post Writer Finally Got a Big Clue Too With A Recent Article…
It’s been about 3 years that I have been covering all the various subsidiaries purchased by insurance companies and nice to see someone else finally touch this topic as with massive daisy chains of subsidiaries most consumers have a not a clue on how they function today and it’s not all about in…
Incoming J and J CEO, Alex Gorsky Linked To Fraud as Relates Back to Omnicare States Motion Filed By the Federal Government
The board has given him the job but will he keep it? The investigation goes back to 1999 when the FDA did not approve Risperdal for behavioral disturbances with dementia and stated there was not enough data. The FDA warned it was not safe enough to market for the elderly. The link below has some …
FDA Approves Votrient to Treat Patients With Advanced Soft Tissue Sarcoma Who Previously Have Had Chemotherapy
This is a drug that extends life and the clinical trials stated there were around 3 additional months of life versus non treatment. The drug is also very toxic to the liver and can cause death, but when the cancer is advanced at this stage I wonder if the toxic nature to the liver is worth it?…
Goldman Insider Trading Investigation Revolves Around Abbott Labs Purchase of Advanced Medical Optics in Santa Ana, CA
In an unrelated case one settlement has already been reached with a professional baseball player who cashed in and is paying $2.5 million to settle the SEC inquiry. Money was just paid without any comments as far as guilt or innocence on that one. Matthew Korenberg, is a San Francisco-b…
FDA Approves Another Drug for Erectile Dysfunction to Compete with Viagra and Others–Stendra And the Need for Speed
The drug is in the same class and this one is supposed to work faster than the competition according to what is around the web with a few MD comments. This one gets the time down to 30 minutes so that dual bathtub or whatever arrangements are made don’t have to wait as long. I could never figure o…
Practicing Rationale Medicine–Otis Brawley MD Keynote Address at the Association of Healthcare Journalists–Screenings, Treatments and More…
Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society spoke at the Association of Healthcare Journalists. This is good thing and well worth listening to. He explains tests, marketing and treatments especially with cancer as that is his field, an oncologist. He says we need do…
Allscripts CFO Resigns Along With A Few Other Key Individuals, Board Fires Chairman–1st Quarter Had Lower Sales And Net Earnings Down–Long Haul to Get Software Technologies Merged So They Work
The merger actually took place back in 2010 and both companies have a lot of EMR/EHR technologies. Allscripts was already a bundle of merged technologies over the years. So what does this say about the sales of electronic medical records, is it down all over or are folks buying other products? Al…
Aetna First Quarter Results for 2012 Down 13% As Medical Claims Rise And Retail Marketing Efforts Continue With More Algorithm and Extensive Parameters Set for Qualification and Risk Assessments
So far the only one who’s profits in the major insurance business that keep rising are United as Blue Cross also experienced a drop in profits. United has so many subsidiaries in their daisy chain that they get a cut of money it seems in almost every area today. As a matter of fact it’s almost sca…
Watson Pharma Buys Swiss Company Actavis for Just Under $6 Billion
Generic Lipitor has been the big blockbuster that has helped Watson and Actavis is also a generic drug company, mainly in Europe and Watson is looking for a bigger footprint there. Watson also has some of their own brand name products they market as well and they have partnered with Amgen with …
Another Study that Shows Pay for Performance is Not Bringing About Better Patient Outcomes…Why Do They Keep Doing It? What’s CMS Going to Do?
The only company I hear talk about pay for performance all the time is United Healthcare and it certainly must help their profits. Pay for performance has it’s place in sales but with steroid marketing of late and naïve consumers believing every report they hear, I think we are a little heavy o…
Sandbox VC Firm that Manages Blue Cross/Blue Shield VC Funds Is Moving to San Francisco–An Incubator for Some New Coders To Write Algorithms for Profit?
What else would you think? Why would they not stay in Chicago? When you see those orange tablets sitting in doctors offices, those are funded by the Blues Venture Capital arm. Who would have ever thought health insurance companies would turn into VC. Look what happened here as Wellpoint buys a c…
Accretive Medical Collections and Analytics Cited by Minnesota by Attorney General For Collecting from Patients At Bedside and Worse–Employees on Pay for Performance Too? Killer Algorithms Chapter 28
Ok we all know collection folks put employees on pay for performance or they get a bonus but this went a little too far. We already know they were in trouble for their past practice of showing actual patient records to investors on Wall Street and that was uncovered over due to a lost notebook. Th…
Look No Further Than Wisconsin To See the Connection Between “Digital Illiterate Lawmakers” With New Law “No Web Cams During a Non Surgical Abortion Procedure” - This Says It All!
I talk a lot about digital illiteracy with many lawmakers, why? Because it’s true and all you have to do is read the news. It’s amazing that in the rapidly developing world of technology we have today that you still see these throw backs to the 70s. They haven’t quite figured it out yet that tech…
Mislabeling Work in Labs Sends Years of Cancer Research Down the Drain With Misidentified Contaminated Cells
Can you imagine being a scientist and then finding out later that the cells given for research were contaminated? This is also hidden at times with researchers and journal publications have been in error as well and have had to be rescinded. According to the article here there’s not much being don…
Medical Marijuana Machine Gets Busted in Orange County–Battle Still Continues Over Access
The medical marijuana business still has issues over laws that don’t agree with one another. In this case the city of Santa Ana closed down this dispensary and the machine too. A couple years ago there was a machine installed in downtown Los Angeles that coinci…
Microsoft Research–Where News Ideas Develop to Include Solving Big Problems Like the HIV Virus By Working With Email Spam Filters And Kinect
This is pretty wild that some of the same coding techniques that we use to identify spam mail can also be applied to identify HIV virus mutations and this is a great way to use “machine learning” for better research and knowledge. Today there’s so much code written that you can in fact see what par…
We Pay Gasoline Tax to Keep Up the US Highway Infrastructure–Why Not Tax the Data Selling Companies and Banks to Keep Up the US Government IT Infrastructure? A “Buffett Tax” Alternative
It’s time for another one of these posts since the Buffett Law on taxes is sinking or is sunk. If you have followed any of the news in the last few years about the SEC (Madoff) and other government departments needing IT infrastructure updates, let’s face it, we need a tax for that. Corporatio…
UnitedHealthCare 1st Quarter of 2012 Yields over $1 Billion in Net Profits–25% of the Nation Still Remains Uninsured
The Los Angeles Times ran this article today about the “holes in health insurance coverage” and is that where some of the profits lie? Also noted in the growth was the DOD contract award. Did this lawsuit have anything to do with the award mentioned in the article as well as hiring the former US …
