Dec. 7 Media Roundup

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.