Cases Blog digs into the research and identifies the four classes of drugs responsible for 67% of adverse drug reactions:
There’s an interesting semantic discussion going on, captured at MedCityNews:
If you listen to people discuss mobile health and digital health, they are talking about the same thing. But it’s not just about semantics. It’s around mindset. People aren’t investing in or creating products that make great iPhone apps, they’re primarily seeking the best solutions to leverage data for everything from genomics to telemedicine. All of those will eventually have an app-based solution (or they may begin there), but the aim is to leverage all things D (as in data and digital).
PGXL’s PerMIT software, currently headed into clinical trials, is designed to help physicians properly dose warfarin patients, speeding (we think, the trials will tell) the time to optimal INR and reducing the risk of bleeding. We developed PerMIT as a web-based technology, but what is clear now is that adopting it for mobile is going to be mandatory before going to market.
Chris Seper at MedCityNews favors bundling “mobile” under the digital umbrella, and we’re on board with that. PerMIT is becoming a website, an app, a module that can be plugged into third-party EMR software. The key is to ease physicians’ adoption of genetic information into real-world medical practice. Since it matters not what platform transmits the guidance, “digital” is the way to think about it.
James Hollender, an iPhone developer in Massachusetts, has released a smartphone app to help warfarin patients monitor their Vitamin K intake.
Warfarin (aka Coumadin©) thins blood by reducing the liver’s ability to produce blood-clotting proteins. Fluctuations in Vitamin K in the diet can increase or decrease the effect of warfarin, putting patients at risk of stroke or internal bleeding.
The Vitamin K app provides information about foods and how they are rated for Vitamin K content based on preparation and serving sizes. This is provided as a means to assist in deciding which foods to eat if you are using blood thinning medications such as Coumadin or warfarin. Foods are rated from EXTREMELY LOW to EXTREMELY HIGH in Vitamin K.
It is available for iPhone and iPad.
The FDA has approved Zelboraf (vemurafenib) for the treatment of BRAF V600E mutation-positive, inoperable or metastatic melanoma (skin cancer). In trials, the drug proved so effective the FDA fast-tracked the approval.
“The FDA approval of Zelboraf marks a major step forward in personalizing the treatment of metastatic melanoma, a devastating disease that until this year had limited approved treatment options,” said Hal Barron, M.D., chief medical officer and head, Global Product Development. “We will continue to study this medicine with a goal of further improving outcomes for people with melanoma and other cancers that are driven by BRAF mutations.”
PGXL provides BRAF genotyping on a 3 – 5 day turnaround.
Dr. Valdes and Dr. Linder had an interesting article in Advance, an online magazine for clinical laboratory administrators. The crux of the article is that clinical labs are playing a larger role in medical treatment, and as personalized medicine (PM) grows, that role will only increase.
The development of PM makes clinical laboratories the central providers of patient-specific, actionable information that will guide physicians and other healthcare providers…The truth is that the practice of medicine has always been “personal” in that physicians treat individuals based on signs, symptoms and other diagnostic information obtained for that individual. What has revolutionized the concept of PM is the rapid process of taking medical discoveries from bench to bedside at a rate not previously experienced. All indications are that the services provided by clinical laboratories are central to the rapid evolution of that process.
Read the whole article here.
PGXL is just days from moving into its much larger lab and office.
Along with more space, we’re also adding capabilities. Our techs have been out to California for training and are now up-to-speed on the AutoGenomics Infiniti. The first new assay being validated on the Infiniti is BRAF for colorectal cancer. We’re also migrating some of our exiting tests over to the new platform, which gives us greater flexibility in what we can offer our clients.
The new devices are part of partnership with AutoGenomics that you can read about atYahoo! Finance.