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Antisoma's ASA404 1800 mg/m2 lung cancer trial will report positive survival data (www.therapeuticsdaily.com)
ASA404 is a small-molecule vascular disrupting agent that selectively disrupts established tumour blood vessels, in theory allowing chemotherapy to reach tumor cells. The data to date in NSCLC is quite promising, with significant increases in overall and medial survival when combined with...
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Philips SpeechMagic Used In Largest Deployment Of Front-End Radiology Speech Recognition In The UK (www.medicalnewstoday.com)
In the modern era of medicine, where documentation and communication is important, fast turn around of dictated reports (radiology, consultation, progress notes) is important for an efficient workflow. Speech recognition software has improved dramatically over the last decade, allowing for relatively...
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Blue Shield of California to pay $31M in quality bonuses to state medical groups (www.fiercehealthcare.com)
Pay for performance is here, and being used in actual reimbursements. This is an example of this in the private payor model.
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Poniard Pharmaceuticals Announces Initiation of Picoplatin Phase 2 Trial in First-line Treatment of Hormone-Refractory Prostate Cancer in Combination with Docetaxel and Prednisone (money.cnn.com)
Taxotere with prednisone is the standard first line chemotherapy for hormone refractory prostate cancer based on the results of the TAX 327 trial. The ongoing phase II trial looks to see if the addition of a platinum based agent to taxotere improves outcomes in hormone refractory prostate...
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Phase I intravenous trial for anti-cancer drug achieves primary objectives (www.pipelinereview.com)
Cytopias new agent CY997 has met it's phase I goal to determine MTD and DLT - not a hard task to have done. Either it's tolerable and safe or not tolerable and not safe. In this case, the former holds true. However, without more significant clinical data - phase II and III -...
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By 2008, Medicare won't pay for hospital errors (www.fiercehealthcare.com)
Well....we know CMS doesn't have enough money to fund healthcare in perpetuity. Physicians have been taking reimbursement cuts or lack of raises over the last 5 years. Realizing you can't squezze enough money out of the physicians, Medican now brilliantly plans to...
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Oncoscience AG, the european partner of YM BioSciences, announces completion of patient enrollment in phase III brain cancer trial of nimotuzab (www.pipelinereview.com)
Glioblastomas and diffuse pontine gliomas in adults and children are agressive, and nearly universally fatal. The standard of care today for GBMs is concurrent chemoradiotherapy with Temodar, based on the results of the NCIC trial (Stupp, et al., NEJM, 352:987-96, 2005). For diffuse...
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Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Investigational New Drug Application for SPI-1620 Cleared by U.S. Food & Drug Administration (www.pipelinereview.com)
There are many theories out there about how angiogenesis affects tumor growth. One theory is that anti-angiogenic agents emilinate the leakiness of blood vessels, improving flow of blood and chemotherapy to the tumor, essentially getting more of a cytotoxic agent to the target.
SPI-1620...
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Hand Hygiene Promotion Decreases Healthcare-Associated Infections in Very-Low-Birth-Weight Neonates (www.medscape.com)
It's not a surprise that washing your hands frequently reduces the spread of infections. This study verifies what we already know - frequent hand washing between each patient encounter reduces the spread of infections in very low birthweight babies. With aggressive intervention, we...
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MDs offer new services, for $3,600 yearly fee (www.boston.com)
Primary care physicians, often overworked and underpaid for their efforts are seeing a new way to return to the traditional practice style of physcians many years ago, offering appointments lasting more than 6 minutes, and a host of personal touches. By charging a premium for this service...