Sept. 15 Media Roundup

Last week’s news had no shortage of exciting stories, which included promising medical and research innovations, the release of new Apple products and forward-thinking ideas released from mHealth tech companies.

Chief Operating Officer and tech evangelist Mike Capone was particularly interested in the big data technique developed by researchers at Rice University and its implications for the healthcare industry. “This article highlights something that Medidata has been emphasizing for a while -- the importance of advancing analytics and bringing real world data into clinical trials.”

Read up on all of the news coverage we shared last week plus the article Mike found notable below.

mHealth and Tech

• At Rice University, researchers have developed a big data technique through “clustering” that has the potential to reveal new information in complex sets of data (like electronic health records!). 
• Walgreens is taking a creative spin on digital health and has begun an online pharmacist chat reaching thousands of patients.  
• Looking for the next big healthcare innovation? A Brookings Institute analysis found that digital health innovations may lead to the next industry breakthrough.
• Pathway Genomics has launched liquid biopsies that use gene sequencing technology to find traces of cancer in healthy patients. 
• What’s in the future of neuroscience? Digital Health’s Steven Krein interviews Nathan Intrator, the founder of Neurosteer, about advanced sensors and signal processing.
• More than 100,000 mobile health apps are on the market, but many of them are ineffective. Evidation Health is on the case and using data analytics to examine the effectiveness of digital health companies’ claims. 
• The title of the joint Deloitte and MIT article says it all: Strategy, Not Technology, Drives Digital Transformation. Check out the piece for all the details on why conservative companies that avoid risk-taking are unlikely to thrive.
• From pink eye to dengue fever, Google has unveiled a new search feature that lets users look up details about more than 900 health conditions.  

Pharma and Life Sciences

• Wouldn’t a universal flu vaccine be amazing news? Thanks to independent teams of scientists using a viral protein to ward off groups of viruses, we’re getting closer to one!
• Our own Glen de Vries was quoted in an article about the increasingly difficult process of clinical trials and the need to improve efficiency by focusing on data.
• The Lasker Awards were announced last week! One of the most respected awards in medicine, this year’s award went to three scientists for a cancer treatment and genetics discoveries. 
• Silicon Valley “unicorn” Stemcentrx is fighting common cancer with a unique approach (that isn’t universally accepted yet) which includes targeting stem cells. 
• Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is learning how to stop excessive bone growth of rare disease patients whose condition causes them to grow a second skeleton.
• In England, the National Institute of Health Care and Excellence (NICE) approved a new immunotherapy drug for patients whose melanoma stopped responding to previous treatments.  
• In a Clinical Leader article, Mike McKay talks about why he thinks RBM is the “biggest game changer to hit clinical operations since EDC.”
• Researchers are testing gene therapy as a potential way to keep the immune system from attacking healthy, insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Read all the details here.
• In promising news for some leukemia patients, blood cells created in a lab to kill cancer have led to four-year remissions.

Company News

• We were excited to announce last week that a new client - Walvax Biotechnology - has selected our clinical cloud platform to improve data management and drive innovation in a vaccine for infants! Our news was covered in a bunch of different publications last week.

If you haven’t registered for our September 30 - October 1 conference presented with The New York Academy of Sciences, it’s not too late! Sign up today to attend the event and learn about the future potential for mobile health devices to transform clinical trials.