National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blogs This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

What Are We Going to Do with a 10.5-Tesla Magnet?
After 10 long years of research, scientists at the University of Minnesota ’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) have successfully conducted agroundbreaking magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of the whole human body at 10.5-Tesla, the strongest magnetic field strength ever to be used. The new magnet creates highly-defined images of the body ’s functions that will help physicians get a clearer and more in-depth look at specific conditions like Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and cancer, and allow them to determine appropriate treatment plans. Around 2008, CMRR received an $8 million grant from the National...
Source: radRounds - March 30, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs

FDA Transparency Blueprint Issued
Most everyone even tangentially related to the pharmaceutical industry knows and understands that right now, transparency is a hot topic. In Winter 2017, The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics published a Special Supplement to Volume 45:4, a written companion to a January 16, 2018 symposium entitled, “Blueprint for Transparency at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” According to the Letter from the Editor included in the Special Supplement, “guest editors Anna L. Davis, James Dabney Miller, Joshua M. Sharfstein, and Aaron S. Kesselheim and their co-authors have tackled the challenging topic of transparency at...
Source: Policy and Medicine - March 28, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs

Along with the NIH budget hike comes a less welcome large hike in the budget for quackery for the NCCIH
Earlier this month, Congress passed an omnibus budget bill that provided a large hike in the budget the National Institutes of Health. Unfortunately, along with that budget hike was an even bigger percent hike for the NIH's bastion of quackery, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. How did this happen? The post Along with the NIH budget hike comes a less welcome large hike in the budget for quackery for the NCCIH appeared first on RESPECTFUL INSOLENCE. (Source: Respectful Insolence)
Source: Respectful Insolence - March 27, 2018 Category: Surgery Authors: Orac Tags: Bad science Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Naturopathy Politics Pseudoscience Quackery featured National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine National Center for Complementary a Source Type: blogs

The Future of Value-Based Care Relies Upon Providers: Taking the Reins on Alternative Payment Models
By CHUCK SAUNDERS and NEAL SHORE, MD 2017 was a pivotal year for the growth of value-based care. For many practices, this meant completing their first performance year as part of the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). A much smaller percentage of practices was able to participate in approved advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs). While practices await feedback on their 2017 performance, early lessons have already become evident. Clearly, as practices are assigned greater responsibility and accountability for patient populations, it becomes increasingly important that they effectively navigate the reimburseme...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 23, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

The Faltering Effort to Develop an NIH Biobank; Time to Pull the Plug?
For three years, the NIH has been trying to build a biobank containing personal health information plus DNA analyses for one million U.S. citizens. However, not a single person's DNA has yet been sequenced. This NIH project was discussed in a recent article in the NYT (see:The Struggle to Build a Massive ‘Biobank’ of Patient Data). Below is an excerpt from the article:This spring, the National Institutes of Health will start recruiting participants for one of the most ambitious medical projects ever envisioned. The goal is to find one million people in the United States...who are willing to have their genomes...
Source: Lab Soft News - March 23, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Genomic Testing Healthcare Innovations Lab Information Medical Research Public Health Source Type: blogs

The AHRQ is in the line of fire. Here ’s why you should care.
For the past 30 years, a little-known U.S. health agency has supported and produced volumes of groundbreaking research on how to make health care safer, less wasteful, and more effective. Dubbed “the little federal agency that could,” AHRQ has accomplished this feat with a small fraction of the budgets of its higher-profile cousins, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Nonetheless, its work has often been politically unpopular and unheralded outside of a small community of health services researchers and patient advocates. Sadly, when all medical waste is s...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 17, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/kenneth-lin" rel="tag" > Kenneth Lin, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Primary Care Public Health & Source Type: blogs

The Right Place for Medicine is Distant from Both the Failures of Regulatory Excess and the Failures of Snake Oil
It is possible to think that (a) FDA regulators are not all that interested in much other than protecting their own positions, and their actions impose a terrible cost on health and longevity by suppressing progress in medicine, (b) that some degree of reviews and trials and data and proof are a great idea, necessary to the development of new therapies, and can be handled in a distributed way in a free market, and (c) people who run so far from the FDA that they drop the reviews and trials and data and proof, replacing them with marketing and wishful thinking, are not doing anyone any favors. This collection of sens...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 14, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Western diet depletes artery-protecting immune cells
New research from scientists at the La Jolla Institute For Allergy and Immunology shows how a diet high in fat and cholesterol depletes the ranks of artery-protecting immune cells, turning them into promoters of inflammation, which exacerbate atherosclerotic plaque buildup that occurs in cardiovascular disease. The team has also found that high density lipoproteins (HDL) — more commonly known as “good cholesterol” — counteract this process, helping the protective immune cells maintain their identity and keep arteries clear. The study published March 15, 2018, in the journal Nature Communicat...
Source: Nursing Comments - March 12, 2018 Category: Nursing Authors: M1gu3l Tags: Dieting Source Type: blogs

The NIH starts spending $1.5 billion in new Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neuro-technologies (BRAIN) projects
___ NIH Starts to Spend $4.8 Billion in “Extra” Cures Drug Research Money (P&T Community): “The National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched 110 new brain research projects in the fiscal year ending last September (2017) with the first portion of the $1.5 billion over 10 years it will hopefully receive from the 21st Century Cures Act, which spread a total of $4.8 billion over four NIH programs. That is money over and above the NIH annual appropriation from Congress. The other three “Innovation Funds” are: Precision Medicine, Cancer Moonshot, and Regenerative Medicine. The $1.5 billion in new Brain Research th...
Source: SharpBrains - March 7, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Health & Wellness Technology Alzheimers brain clinical-trials Innovation Funds Moonshot National-Institutes-of-Health Neuro-technologies neurotechnologies NIH Pfizer Source Type: blogs

CMS announces MyHealthEData Initiative and Medicare Blue Button 2.0
Here is one of the biggest announcements that came out of HIMSS 2018: the MyHealthEData Initiative launched by CMS.MyHealthEData aims to empower patients by ensuring that they control their healthcare data and can decide how their data is going to be used, all while keeping that information safe and secure. The overall government-wide initiative is led by the White House Office of American Innovation with participation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – including its Centers for Medicare& Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC...
Source: Medicine and Technology by Dr. Joseph Kim - March 7, 2018 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs

Requesting Your Input on the Draft NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science
To capitalize on the opportunities presented by advances in data science, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is developing a Strategic Plan for Data Science. This plan describes NIH’s overarching goals, strategic objectives, and implementation tactics for promoting the modernization of the NIH-funded biomedical data science ecosystem. As part of the planning process, NIH has published a draft of the strategic plan [PDF 490KB], along with a Request for Information to seek input from stakeholders, including members of the scientific community, academic institutions, the private sector, health professionals, profession...
Source: NIGMS Feedback Loop Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - March 5, 2018 Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Dr. Jon Lorsch Tags: Request for Information Biomedical Research Enterprise NIH Source Type: blogs

One Third of Alzheimer's Cases Shown to Be Lifestyle Related
Over the last decade, there have been many previous attempts to determine whether or not people can decrease their risk of developing Alzheimer’s by increasing exercise - both mental and physical - and maintaining a healthy diet. These efforts were small and experts considered them only borderline successful, or in some cases, complete failures. In fact, at a 2009 meeting convened by the National Institutes of Health to examine the state of science in Alzheimer’s disease, an independent review committee said that it found "no compelling evidence to show the disease could be prevented with lifestyle interventions." Read...
Source: Minding Our Elders - February 28, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs

The New Scapegoat for Gun Violence: Mental Illness
Our President and others have latched onto the idea that mental illness — not guns — is to blame for the gun violence plaguing our country. Labeling mental illness as the cause of gun violence grossly oversimplifies a grossly complex problem. But we like tying things up neatly. We want to quickly and easily understand who’s to blame, so pointing a finger at the mentally ill makes that easy for us. This toxic, misplaced blame perpetuates the chronic discrimination we as a society still possess for the mentally ill, who represent a large population of Americans and who, with the same rare exception found in v...
Source: World of Psychology - February 27, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: John Tsilimparis, MFT Tags: Anger Criminal Justice Minding the Media Policy and Advocacy Psychology Stigma Violence and Aggression destigmatization Gun Laws Gun Violence marginalization mass shooting Mental Illness Regression School Shooting stereotypin Source Type: blogs

Aldape Takes on Role as Chief of the Laboratory of Pathology at NCI
Kenneth Aldape, MDKenneth Aldape, MD, has joined the National Cancer Institute ’s Center for Cancer Research as chief of theLaboratory of Pathology, an integral component of the research and clinical community at the National Institutes of Health.Prior to his current role, Aldape was a professor and department chair of pathology at the MD Anderson Cancer in Houston, Texas. He was later recruited to Toronto General Hospital and Research Institute to develop a brain tumor program and conduct clinical-translational research in neuro-oncology. (Source: neuropathology blog)
Source: neuropathology blog - February 26, 2018 Category: Radiology Tags: neuropathologists Source Type: blogs