Health care information company IMS Health has a lot of new cash in its war chest.
The health-focused tech firm, which provides analytics and services to drug makers, payers, and health care providers, raised $1.3 billon Friday morning in its New York IPO. It sold 65 million shares at $20, within its expected $18 to $21 price range. At its offer price, the company commands a $6.9 billion market cap.
Founded in 1954, Danbury, Connecticut-based IMS is the largest vendor of U.S. physician prescribing data. IMS pays pharmacies for anonymized prescription data, which it sells to drug makers curious about individual doctors’ prescribing habits.
Wearables are not going to be just clunky watches or nerdy glasses. Researchers announced this weekend they have created a wearable device as thin as a temporary tattoo — essentially, a wearable skin — that can store data and deliver drugs.
While this is not the first such experiment to develop an electronic skin, it is the first with storage and medicine capabilities. The research, conducted by scientists from the Institute for Basic Science and Seoul National University in South Korea and the University of Texas in Austin, is reported in Nature Nanotechnology.
Venture capital funding to startups providing data analytics solutions for the healthcare sector has jumped over 100% YoY. Prominent VCs including Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital have jumped in the mix as big data gets verticalized.
As the healthcare IT market grows, venture capital investors are getting increasingly bullish on startups specializing in verticalized predictive and prescriptive data and analytics solutions for the healthcare sector.
With increased demand and limited resources, current healthcare policies may prove to be unsustainable in coming years, warned policymakers at an event organised by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) in Brussels on Thursday (27 March).
The healthcare sector can add value to Europe's economy, provided that cost pressures are addressed. For example, the cost of diabetes can be reduced through smart investment in obesity treatment, they said.
Although they disproportionately affect young people and impact many lives negatively, allergies are still neglected by medical specialists and few countries have adequate programmes in place to deal with them, writes Claudio Ciprian Tănăsescu.
Claudiu Ciprian Tănăsescu is a Romanian MEP in the S&D group and a member of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee in the European Parliament.
What are allergies? An allergy is defined as an exaggerated response of the human immune system to substances that should be harmless. While these may be manageable for some people, for many others they can have a serious impact on their lives.
A new study from France shows that obesity is on the rise across Europe. What is to blame? Poor eating habits, stress and a lack of physical exercise. EurActiv France reports.
According to the French 'Mutuelle Générale de l’Education Nationale' (MGEN) and the polling institution Opinion Way, obesity is rapidly becoming a European epidemic. The survey was carried out between January and February 2014 and questioned 2339 people. It found that 16% of France's population is obese.
Ariosa Diagnostics is already a favorite with pregnant women. But it’s about to become a big name on Wall Street, too, with its initial public offering.
Ariosa plans to offer $69 million in a proposed maximum aggregate offering price, but it has not priced its shares yet or said how many share it plans to offer.
Ambient Clinical Analytics is a new startup, founded by Mayo Clinic researchers with help from Silicon Valley investors, that aims to bring data assimilation, communication and analytics to the bedside.
The day when your doctor wears smart glasses while examining you just got a little closer.
San Francisco-based wearable-tech startup Augmedix has secured $3.2 million in funding from DCM and Emergence Capital Partners, just under a year after graduating from the Rock Health accelerator program.
Augmedix is building clinical applications for Google Glass. The startup is working with doctors across the country to introduce them to Glass, which is available to select developers for some $1,200.
Chances of obesity twice as likely for individuals at highest genetic risk
The results show that eating fried food more than four times a week had twice as big an effect on body mass index (BMI) for those with the highest genetic risk scores compared with lower scores. In other words, genetic makeup can inflate the effects of bad diet, says an accompanying editorial.
