For nearly eight years my mother has been on anticoagulants. Because of this, she has to drive down to her local hospital every two weeks or so and clinicians test her blood to see if she is in danger of developing a blood clot. In theory it seems pretty simple, and pretty painless. But in reality it can be pretty taxing. Although the visits last 20 minutes or so, my mother has had to plan her life around these “events.” Vacations have been cut short and travel plans now almost always include looking for an institution that will be able...

I’m not proud to admit this, but once in a while I do get bit by the green-eyed monster – only when it comes to medical innovation though. Hey, nobody’s perfect – right? About eight years ago I had major colorectal surgery following a pretty wicked battle with ulcerative colitis. Basically the surgeon had to take out my entire colon, creating a stoma (artificial opening in the abdomen wall through which the end of the intestine is brought). I wore an ileostomy bag for 15 months before having a “take down” surgery so that I no longer needed the bag...

President Barack Obama unveiled his deficit reduction plan last week, calling for a mix of spending reductions and tax hikes that the White House claims would cut federal deficits by $4 trillion over the next 12 years without gutting popular programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, a challenge that may be difficult to achieve given the level of debt in the U.S. Obama's plan calls for a repeal of the Bush-era tax cuts on families making more than $250,000 annually. The president also called for the creation of a "debt fail-safe" trigger that would impose automatic across-the-board spending cuts and...

(For those who wonder whether Congress will ever pass a patent reform bill, we offer the following with a tip o' the hat to Edgar Allan Poe....) Once upon a mid-day dreary, While I pondered dazed and bleary, O'er forgotten writs of Federal Circuit law and patent lore. Yes, I nodded, nearly napping, But then came a nagging tapping. Some optimist was gently rapping, Rapping at my office door. "'Tis some fool," I think I muttered, "Waxing over writs of yore, Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember, It was back in some December, When each separate Senate...

 By most objective accounts, Donald Berwick is doing a pretty decent job as chief administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, giving CMS a much-needed shot in the arm and kick in the . . . well, you know. Unfortunately, that appears to not be enough for him to keep the job beyond the end of the year, as mandated by law for "recess" appointments such as himself. Berwick, who knows the provider side of medicine as a pediatrician, is a health policy expert of some repute. He has been quite the thinker on broader healthcare questions, including...

Often times journalists go into interviews with pretty much a clear picture of what the story is going to be. There are few surprises – that is until that one kernel of information spills from the lips of a source and it completely steers the story in a different direction and gets you to look at a subject differently. Well that happened to me during the Southeastern Medical Association Conference  held here in Atlanta recently.  One of the panelists was speaking during a session called successful pathways to medical device innovation, when all of a sudden he paused - and...

It’s easy to understand the excitement about the PARTNER trial, sponsored by Edwards Lifesciences (Irvine, California), the company that makes the much talked about transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) device, called the Sapien. After all, given the choice between open heart surgery or a non-surgical alternative most patients would prefer the latter. However, the data from the study, which was presented earlier this week at the American College of Cardiology (Washington) annual meeting in New Orleans, showed that TAVR patients were also more likely to have a stroke following the procedure. In the study, major strokes were higher for TAVR...

Late last month, Medtronic (Minneapolis) reported that it was cancelling several of its largest contracts with group purchasing organizations (GPOs) worth more than $2 billion collectively. Medtronic said the decision to cancel five contracts with Novation (Irving, Texas) and another with Premier (Charlotte, North Carolina) will save it about $60 million a year. Wall Street reacted positively to the news and some industry watchers are wondering if other companies will follow suit and bypass GPOs to sell products directly to hospitals. GPOs – which use high volume purchasing power to secure discounts for hospitals, introduce new devices to the market,...

Patent reform legislation has been in the news quite a bit the past few weeks in the U.S., with both chambers of Congress working on legislation that could affect the way patents are currently registered. The U.S. patent system is currently based on a first-to-invent doctrine, which means that the inventor who first conceived of the invention and then reduced it to practice by filing a patent application is considered the first inventor and is entitled to patent protection. Every other country in the world, except the Phillipines, has a patent system based on the first-to-file doctrine, in which the...