Monthly Archives: July 2015

New Effort to Corral the Prices of Cancer Drugs , Canada Funds New Breast Imaging Tool and More…

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Some of the stories that caught my attention:

  • An upcoming paper in the August issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings sheds light on the high price of cancer drugs and the implications for patients and the health care system. The report also provides recommendations on potential ways to reduce the financial strain.
  • The Harper government in Canada announced funding for a new breast imaging tool that may help reduce additional follow-up surgeries for breast cancer patients. Perimeter Medical Imaging Inc, a medical device company based in Toronto, will develop and test the new tool.
  • Researchers at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute have identified that age and fear of cancer diagnosis are among the reasons why there are high rates of Latina women that do not continue participation following breast and cervical cancer education programs. The research was published in the Journal of Health Communication.

A Health-Tracking App That Provides Personalized Feedback for Physical Activity and Dietary Behavior

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There’s an endless list of apps that track your health, but MyBehavior is the first mobile app to include a suggestion engine that learns a user’s physical activity and dietary behavior in order to provide finely-tuned, personalized suggestions. Developed by researchers at Cornell’s Interaction Design Lab, MyBehavior continually adapts its suggestions by exploiting the most frequent healthy behaviors, while sometimes exploring non-frequent behaviors, in order to maximize the user’s chance of reaching a health goal. The researchers have been working on MyBehavior for more than two years and recently conducted a 14-week study with 16 people using the app on Android smartphones. The Interaction Design Lab is expected to launch the app sometime in September of this year.

Elsevier Service Interruption — Saturday, August 1st

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On Saturday, August 1, access to Elsevier platforms will be unavailable due to a scheduled maintenance for approximately 4.5 hours starting at 06:00 PM EDT.

The platforms and solutions involved are:

  • Elsevier Research Platforms: ScienceDirect, Scopus (including Author Feedback Wizard), Engineering Village, Mendeley
  • Research Intelligence: SciVal Funding
  • R&D Solutions: Reaxys, Embase, Geofacets

Each platform will be displaying a warning to users of this scheduled downtime, and during downtime, there will be a message informing users of the temporary unavailability of service.

To stay up to date with any developments follow the individual Twitter accounts for the products.