Health Revolution: Innovative Prescriptions For Change

Two self-made business moguls and one millennial disruptor are leveraging their success and influence to reverse the trend of declining health. What role should government play in limiting unhealthy food and lifestyle choices? How can corporations be more accountable for the products they offer, and what is the individual’s responsibility?

Medicare’s Blue Button: Data is ‘Oxygen for Innovation’

Dr. Farzad Mostashari, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, discusses how venture capital is a driver in healthcare information technology and data tools like The Blue Button.

Decades-old stroke damage reversible with oxygen therapy

Up to 20 years after suffering a stroke, patients in Israel are reporting remarkable improvements in brain function with calibrated oxygen treatments inside hyperbaric chambers. While treating stroke patients with hyperbaric oxygen is nothing new, the fact that it can be effective after so many years is an exciting new development according to specialists at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center.

How Medical Technology Is Saving Lives in Afghanistan

At Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany, Air Force personnel explain how they keep wounded soldiers alive on the flight back from Afghanistan.

Health Tech Startups are the new buzz?

Entrepreneur Online goes inside Blueprint Health, a health-tech accelerator in New York City, to meet some of the entrepreneurs working to give health care a digital upgrade. Venture-capital dollars have been flowing into the sector in recent years.

Wendy Nguyen is the co-founder of HealthyOut, an app that helps people make healthy dining choices. Tim Soo, who co-founded Meddik, uses the collective wisdom of crowds to provide a new way to search for health-care information on the web. They also meet Seth Freedman, co-founder of intelligentM, which aims to cut down on hospital-caught infections through smart tags. 

Nanotechnology Platform for Vaccine Delivery

Virometix AG is a biotechnology company developing a new generation of vaccines and immunotherapeutic drugs for the prevention and treatment of infectious and chronic human diseases.

Rational molecular design, chemical synthesis and Virometix Vaccines’ proprietary Synthetic Virus-Like Particle platform technology allow for the rapid production and optimization of vaccine candidates with superior properties in terms of safety, efficacy and stability.

Virometix Vaccines is a spun-out company from the University of Zurich. Virometix AG was founded in October 2009, and is based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Intelligent wardrobes open the door to elderly independence

Engineers in Munich are developing an ‘intelligent’ wardrobe to assist elderly people in their day-to-day lives. Called ‘Lisa’, the wardrobe can help with routine daily tasks, while also assisting with more complex jobs like medical check-ups.

A light switch for neurons

Ed Boyden shows how, by inserting genes for light-sensitive proteins into brain cells, he can selectively activate or de-activate specific neurons with fiber-optic implants. With this unprecedented level of control, he’s managed to cure mice of analogs of PTSD and certain forms of blindness. On the horizon: neural prosthetics. 

Israeli scientists see new options for infertility

Israeli scientists predict it will one day be possible to produce human eggs from the cells lining the amniotic membrane, presenting new options for infertile women. The scientists have found immature cells in the amniotic sac, which they hope to turn into mature human egg cells in the laboratory.

Evaluating the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief 

The U.S. government supports programs to combat global HIV/AIDS through an initiative that is known as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). This initiative was originally authorized in the U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 and focused on an emergency response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic to deliver lifesaving care and treatment in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with the highest burdens of disease. It was subsequently reauthorized in the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 (the Lantos-Hyde Act).

Evaluation of PEPFAR makes recommendations for improving the U.S. government’s bilateral programs as part of the U.S. response to global HIV/AIDS. The overall aim of this evaluation is a forward-looking approach to track and anticipate the evolution of the U.S. response to global HIV to be positioned to inform the ability of the U.S. government to address key issues under consideration at the time of the report release.