Industry news

Remote patient monitoring taking off as hospitals look to empower patients, cut costs

Varun Saxena / FierceMedicalDevices

Hospital admissions plummeted at Vidant Health-operated facilities after it started remotely monitoring patients suffering from heart failure, diabetes and high blood pressure. Patients at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center send doctors pictures of their wounds from offsite in order to find out if they need antibiotics. And a patient at the hospital had his blood-pressure medication adjusted after he wirelessly sent the doctors biometrics from his home.

Where Does All That Biotech Venture Capital Go?

Life Sci VC

Venture capital investing in biotech has long been hard to disaggregate: how much goes to “early stage” vs “late stage”, how much goes to CNS vs oncology, discovery vs Phase 3, etc…Today BIO’s David Thomas and Chad Wessel have put some much-needed light onto the biotech investor trends over the past decade with a newly released report

Once again, Big Pharma's bad rep goes viral. Fair or not fair?

Tracy Staton, FeircePharmaMarketing

Here are two more pieces of evidence that the pharma industry's rep is more Johnny Rotten than Pope Francis. A new Harris poll confirms that pharma gets a big thumbs-down from most of the general public, with only 37% of respondents saying "positive" things about the industry--even fewer than last year. That puts the drug business about on par with the airlines, and we all know how much love they get.

Cutting-edge Russian solutions for mobile medicine

Oleg Kouzbit / Marchmont Innovation News

The Russian government has named pharma and biomed as a priority sector for innovation, and set a fairly ambitious strategic goal of increasing the share of domestic medical equipment products in the Russian market to at least 40%.

Biotech boom drives blockbuster VC investments in Boston, San Francisco

John Carroll / FierceBiotech

The venture boom that funneled billions of dollars into life sciences companies last year included a big surge in first-time deals, according to a fresh analysis of the numbers for 2014. And the boom in venture investing looks set to continue well into 2015, according to the analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, working with data provided by Thomson Reuters to put out the MoneyTree report.

Budget 2015: Medical device makers seek duty sops

FirstWorld Pharma

The Economic Times reported that the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AIMED) are seeking import duty concessions and a blanket ban on 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in brown-field projects during the next budget.

Significant Changes Ahead for the Chinese Biologics and Biosimilars Industry

David A. Dunn PhD, Practice Consultant, Life Sciences Professional Services, Thomson Reuters

In the absence of a Chinese regulatory definition of “biosimilarity” there are no marketed biosimilars of recombinant protein biotherapeutics in that country. Unlike the US and Europe, China does not have a regulatory path for the development of biosimilars and all biotherapeutics must follow the same path to approval whether they are novel drugs or new versions of existing ones. 

Canadian government to require drug shortage notice

Rod Nickel / Reuters

The Canadian government will require pharmaceutical companies to post public notices when drugs are not available or face fines, Health Minister Rona Ambrose said.

Rusnano to aid Moscow in innovation cluster development

MarchMont Innovation News

The City of Moscow and Rusnano, Russia’s nanotech giant, have inked a five-year agreement on interaction in the development of local innovation clusters in the Russian capital.

Biotechs welcome spotlight on precision medicine By Brian Orelli

Staff Writer / BioWorld

"We shouldn't just celebrate innovation. We have to invest in innovation. We have to nurture innovation. We have to encourage it and make sure that we're channeling it in ways that are most productive," Obama said in a press conference announcing the initiative.