AtCor Medical (ASX: ACG), the developer and marketer of the SphygmoCor® system which measures central blood pressure and arterial stiffness noninvasively, announced that it would debut SphygmoCor Version 9 at the Annual American College of Cardiology Scientific Session Exposition being held in Atlanta, March 14-16, 2010. AtCor will be demonstrating the system's new features at Booth 717 in the exhibit hall...

Welcoming the publication of the Health Select Committee report on Social Care, Janet Davies, Executive Director of Nursing and Service Delivery at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said: "Nurses have told us that they would prefer a comprehensive model of funding - the only option where everybody would pay collectively for social care, sharing the risk equally and fairly. We also echo the Committee's call for further debate on funding care from taxation...

Their numbers are dwindling at such a rate that our food supply may be in jeopardy - and that decline may continue as their educational debt continues to rise. These are just two of the challenges facing food animal veterinary medicine, one of the bulwarks of our food safety system...

Leaders of dentists working in salaried primary care, hospitals and academia have echoed the disappointment already expressed by colleagues in general practice at the pay award announced for 2010/11. Salaried primary care dentists in England will be given just a one per cent pay increase for next year. Peter Bateman, Chair of the British Dental Association's Salaried Dentists Committee, said: "Salaried primary care dental services treat some of the most vulnerable patients in the community. Two thirds of services already face significant difficulties filling vacancies...

The British Dental Association (BDA) has reaffirmed its support for the piloting of the reforms in Professor Steele's review of dentistry, following today's announcement that at least 30 dental practices have been selected to trial new ways of improving services for patients. The pilots, which are expected to take place over a two-year period, will include the trial of a blended contract which is intended to reward dentists for the number of patients they see, the level of each treatment each patients receives and the quality of the care that is provided...

As part of the final phase of its transparency initiative, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is seeking comment from the public and other interested stakeholders on how the agency can increase transparency in its interactions with regulated industry. Posted in the March 12, 2010, Federal Register, the request for electronic or written comments has a deadline of April 12, 2010. The FDA regulates products responsible for about 25 percent of the gross national product of the United States and the industries responsible for these products...

Moving to expand the evidence base for the future of structural heart disease therapy, Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT), announced the start of the first of several new initiatives in a robust international clinical program for its CoreValve transcatheter aortic valve system, a minimally-invasive alternative to open-heart surgery for aortic valve replacement. The CoreValve Advance clinical study began enrolling patients last week, with the first two implants occurring in Germany...

A University of Michigan study recently published in Academic Emergency Medicine says that it is common for patients 65 and older to receive potentially inappropriate medications when treated in an emergency room. Nearly 19.5 million older patients, or 16.8 percent of eligible emergency visits from 2000-2006, received one or more potentially inappropriate medications - or PIMs. The large sample of approximately 470,000 ED and outpatient clinic visits, corresponding to a national estimate of about 1...

Applications are open for the British Psychological Society's Public Engagement Grants 2010. The Society has £14k to award to its members working on projects that help people or contribute to everyday life, and raise awareness of psychology and psychology research. This is the seventh year of the scheme. Past successful awards include £5k in 2008 to Dr Sarah Davidson who works with the British Red Cross to promote the CALMER psycho-social framework...

An army of 19 new and newly secured care advisors will be joining the fight against muscle disease across the UK with the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. Thanks to the hard work of campaigning patients in 10 UK regions and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, babies, children and adults living with muscle disease will now have access to 19 regional care advisors, who provide vital care co-ordination, advice and guidance on services, equipment and funding. They are also an important point of contact for families to answer their questions about these rare and devastating conditions...

A cross-party group of MPs published a report on social care today which criticised the 'party political squabbling and point-scoring' and called for a fundamental reform of the social care system in England to be an immediate priority for the Government. The MS Society was one of only a handful of organisations who gave evidence to the cross-party group in November and today joined a large number disability and carers organisations in welcoming this latest report...

Emerging Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (Pink Sheets: EHSI) was pleased on learning the news that Intel, The Mayo Clinic and GE Healthcare have launched a new initiative to study the care and cost benefits of home-based telemedicine for elderly patients with chronic illnesses. Emerging Healthcare Solutions has licensed a cutting-edge mobile telemedicine platform from Telemedicus, Inc., which the Company is currently developing for marketing...

BioSante Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: BPAX) announced positive results of a human clinical study that show that its GVAX Leukemia vaccine may be able to reduce or eliminate the last remaining cancer cells in some chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients taking the drug Gleevec (imatinib mesylate). All patients enrolled in the trial used Gleevec for at least one year and still had cancer cells present. The study was conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, Maryland, led by Hyam Levitsky, M.D...

Rex Medical, L.P., announced that it has received 510(k) Clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the Cleaner™ Rotational Thrombectomy System. Cleaner™ technology is indicated for mechanical declotting of occluded native vessel dialysis fistulae and synthetic dialysis access grafts. Argon Medical Devices, Inc. will lead all marketing and distribution efforts for Cleaner™ in the United States, European Union and Canada...

The University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville announced that it has entered into a research collaboration with Merck (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada) to discover novel drugs for women's reproductive health. The collaborative preclinical research program combines expertise in reproductive cell and molecular biology within the Center for Research in Contraceptive and Reproductive Health with the screening resources of the drug discovery and development groups at Merck Research Laboratories in the Netherlands...

Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust has installed a total of ten Ysio wi-D™ Digital Radiography (DR) systems from Siemens Healthcare. Queen Alexandra Hospital will support in and outpatient, adult, paediatric and emergency imaging needs with eight DR systems. Nearby St Mary's Hospital has installed one Ysio for general imaging and Hampshire Community Health Care's Gosport War Memorial Hospital has also installed a system for community based imaging. Already the speed of digital image delivery has reduced patient examination times from 12 to seven minutes...

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has agreed to the implementation of a single approach to front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labelling that it says will best help consumers make healthier choices when they buy food. Food businesses will be encouraged to use all three elements found by independent research to help UK consumers interpret nutritional information: traffic light colours (red, amber and green), text (high, medium or low) and percentage Guideline Daily Amounts (% GDAs)...

Bosses are being encouraged to get their employees more involved in health and safety in a bid to reduce injury and ill health. The Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) new campaign 'do your bit' is in response to workplace research which provides evidence to suggest that involving workers has a positive effect on health and safety performance. The 'do your bit' campaign is a year long initiative offering free or subsidised training courses to help businesses get their employees more involved in improving their health and safety...

Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX), in conjunction with DynPort Vaccine Company LLC (DVC), a CSC Company (NYSE:CSC), presented Phase III study data measuring the clinical efficacy for PREFLUCEL, a trivalent seasonal influenza candidate vaccine. PREFLUCEL is made using Baxter's Vero cell culture platform and does not contain an adjuvant or preservatives. The data were presented at the International Congress on Infectious Disease (ICID) in Miami, Florida...

Solutions for driving productivity and realising process efficiencies in healthcare will be showcased at the Siemens stand at this year's Annual Meeting of the British Nuclear Medicine Society (BNMS). From 26 - 28 April at Harrogate International Centre, visitors to stand 2 will learn how imaging technology and new software innovations are transforming the diagnostic environment. Hybrid systems enable hospitals to benefit from two modalities while saving the time, space and costs associated with installing two separate units...