Medidata Blog
Dec. 7 Media Roundup

August 03, 2016
Reading Time: 2 minutes
It was another busy week for pharma, tech and data news. Catch up below, and stay in touch with us all week on Twitter and LinkedIn.
mHealth and Tech
- Disease-specific apps continue to be developed. Last week, Iodine announced a new app that will help depression patients determine if a new medication is effective.
- Coming to us from Carnegie Mellon University, a new artificial intelligence personal assistant has been developed that “whispers directions in your ear.” The idea is to create an option to YouTube for learning how to do something.
- Scientists at the University of Manitoba have created a stretchable sensor from chewing gum. When chewed for 30 minutes, the sensor is able to pick up body motion and breathing.
- GE Healthcare released GE Health Cloud, a product that will link medical devices across the world, process the data and store the patient records using its new Predix Cloud.
- Hundreds of hospitals are using biometric fingerprint readers to avoid mixing up patients and reduce fraud. Would you be comfortable sharing your fingerprint?
- Half of the cars on the road will be self-driving in the next 15 years. Check out the 10 things to know about artificial intelligence.
- Are biometric tattoos the next big thing in wearables? There was buzz last week about Chaotic Moon’s temporary tattoo prototype – inked right on your skin – that will collect health and other biometric data from your body.
Data
- Our own Mike Capone was featured in a CIO Review piece about accelerating innovation in clinical research digital strategies. Mike discussed how cloud services like Amazon Web Services helped our company accelerate time to innovation.
- People are still needed to review all of the big data being gathered and derive meaning from the numbers. Computers aren’t about to take all of our jobs. Yet.
- The next barrie for big data in healthcare systems: how much and what data should be collected?
Pharma and Life Sciences
- Read up on how next-gen genomics may “ease the precision medicine bottleneck.”
- Prediction for 2016: sponsors will stay focused on tech and patient recruitment as well as going back to competitive functional service provider (FSP) relationships with specialty contract research organizations (CROs).
- In case you missed it, check out another round of Martin Shkreli’s provocative thoughts on his recent Daraprim price increase.
- Online detectives at CrowdMed offer sleuth services to help figure out what’s ailing you.
- The common pigeon can tell the difference benign and malignant tumors. Read up on all the bizarre details and how pigeons may lead us to better cancer screening technologies.
- New prosthetic fingers released by SynTouch let users to gain a sense of touch and temperature. Look what happens when the user pets furry animals!
- Wired on how humans evolved to have such freakishly large brains. Humans have the most cortical neurons of any species on the planet. Architecture is just as important as size.
- New research findings from Arizona State University examines which cancer patients will benefit the most from chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
- Ever wonder why it’s all about the bass? Researchers explore the neuroscience behind what attracts people to a powerful bass line.
Company News
- We were excited last week to announce a new CRO partnership with C&R Research in South Korea! Read up on all the details.
- Infinity Pharmaceuticals has joined the list of companies using our risk-based monitoring software. The company will be using the software in a clinical trial of its treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.