medications

Oracle on Monday announced plans to acquire Relsys, which develops drug safety and risk management applications.

The acquisition, which is expected to close by June, is designed to bolster Oracle's Health Sciences Global Business Unit, formed last summer. Health sciences is one of a number of industry sectors into which Oracle is delving via a buying spree.

Relsys develops applications designed to aid drug, biotech, and medical-device companies in streamlining their operations, adhering to regulatory compliance and improving the safety of their products.

With the acquisition, Oracle aims to provide its customers with the ability to identify safety risks … Read more

The news this week from retail giant Wal-Mart Stores is that its Sam's Club wholesale stores will be selling a health care electronic records management software bundle to medical and dental clinics.

The New York Times covered the details, but the short-short version is that doctors and dentists can purchase the software for an up-front license fee (on a per-physician basis), and will receive the software and a Dell tablet PC for each license.

Boosting the value of the offering is the availability of $19 billion in federal stimulus funds to support conversion of clinics to electronic records management. … Read more

If you're regularly diagnosing an itchy spot, chronic cough, or other mystery ailment online, iTriage's medical-reference app for the iPhone and iPod Touch could save you some steps. The app lets you search and browse hundreds of symptoms, diseases, and procedures in a logically, possibly overly designed layout that's nevertheless easily navigated.

In addition to useful descriptions of the condition, treatments, and medical tests, the app also offers a plethora of support links to your insurer's advice line, medical Web sites like Web MD, and in-app Google Web searches with results that include images and further … Read more

If you regularly find yourself on WebMD or Wikipedia in an attempt to diagnose an itchy spot, chronic cough, or other mystery ailment, a new medical reference app for the iPhone and iPod Touch could save you some steps.

iTriage ($0.99) lets you search and browse hundreds of symptoms, diseases, and procedures in a logically, possibly overly designed app, that's intuitive to navigate. In addition to useful descriptions of the condition, treatments, and medical tests, the app also offers a plethora of support links to your insurer's advice line, medical Web sites like WebMD, and in-app Google … Read more

Dr. Jeffrey Segal has an interesting business. Called Medical Justice, it proclaims on its home page that it is "relentlessly protecting physicians from frivolous lawsuits."

One thing Medical Justice does in its march against frivolity is help doctors get patients to sign "Mutual Privacy Agreements." These appear to be documents in which the patient promises never to post anything negative about the doctor on review sites or blogs. (2,000 doctors are already using these agreements.)

There are many, many words on the Medical Justice site. And I tried to pay attention to them all. So … Read more

They say some music just gets into your brain. But not so often into your brain surgery.

Gavin Brooke, an 18-year-old from the United Kingdom, needed surgery to remove a brain tumor. But his doctors needed him to be awake throughout the operation so that they could be sure that they wouldn't damage his brain.

The solution was to hook up the iPod to the operating room's sound system. The first track Gavin chose for this six-hour headbanger's opera was Apologize by Timbaland, featuring One Republic.

This reflected the fact that, in his mind, he wanted to … Read more

Perform microsurgery on your friends and family in this fun game that brings back memories of old-school arcade games. You play as Dr. Awesome, a young doctor just getting his feet wet in the OR. The game uses your iPhone contact list for the patients you will need to operate on to remove several virus strains. The gameplay is much like the arcade classic Qix in which you move your icon to capture sections of the gameplay screen in an effort to capture a set percentage of the entire screen. In Dr. Awesome you need to cut away (or capture) … Read more

The world may be gaining ground in its war against the mosquito, specifically Aedes aegypti- the planet's main vector for dengue-thanks to a new trap developed by the US Army.

The Tiger Trap, created and marketed under license by Spring Star, Inc. exploits the Aedes' "irrepressible urge" to lay their eggs mainly on the sides of water filled containers. This characteristic allows them to be second guessed and lured into contact with a tiny dose (1 millionth of a kilogram) of lethal insecticide. Not only is this an improvement over the conventional method of spraying insecticide … Read more

Intel has begun pilot programs to test a home health laptop, application, and database system that puts patients remotely in sync with their health care providers.

The Intel Health Guide, which includes a laptop for patients and an online interface for health care administrators, received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in July. Now Aetna, Scan Health Plan, Erickson Retirement Communities, and the Providence Medical Group in Oregon have each begun pilot programs to test how well the system works, or doesn't work, with their patients.

"Health care is an area where getting and gathering the right information, and getting decisions made in a timely matter can make an enormous difference in patient care. We hope this technology helps with that," Mariah Scott, head of sales and marketing for Intel's Digital Health Group, said in an interview.

While many see health care moving into the home through technology, it seems like Intel knows government approval alone will not convince people to trust a tech company to dispense medical advice.

The company also announced that it has partnered with two major names in medicine, the Mayo Clinic and the American Heart Association, to provide the application's medical assessments, evidence-based treatment guidelines, and educational multimedia content.

That's probably a good idea because Intel plans to sell its Intel Health Care Management Suite as a comprehensive online data-collection system for health care organizations; the Intel Health Guide PHS6000 device is intended for patients themselves to operate, not experienced clinicians visiting the homebound as previously speculated.… Read more