The new director of the U.S. NIH, Monica Bertagnolli, has set out the prospectus for her tenure, saying she intends to apply the agency’s $47 billion per annum budget to reverse the decline in health and life expectancy in the U.S.
Heart failure is a leading cause of disability and death in the U.S., but many cases are diagnosed late due to limited access to echocardiography, the primary method of detecting the condition. To address that need, the U.S. FDA has granted breakthrough device designation to Eko Devices Inc., of Berkeley, Calif., for an electrocardiogram (ECG)-based algorithm that could serve as an easily accessible screening tool for heart failure during routine physical exams.
Getting on top of the persistent HIV epidemic requires getting ahead of new cases, but only about 7% of at-risk patients have been advised of a prophylactic drug regime approved by the FDA seven years ago. Two new studies appearing in The Lancet HIV suggest that an algorithm that uses electronic health record (EHR) data can help physicians identify their at-risk patients who are good candidates for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), thus improving the odds that modern medicine might finally put an end to the scourge of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.