Rudolph Tanzi, Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Child Neurology and Mental Retardation at Massachusetts General Hospital, is featured as one of Time’s most influential peple for his work to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.
Nearly 70 Harvard Medical School postdoctoral fellows, professors, and administrators signed a letter arguing that recent changes to the University’s health benefits plan may disproportionately burden Harvard postdocs, whose salaries are often lower than many other non-union employees’. Michael Chernew, Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy, is quoted. Kristin Krukenberg, research fellow in systems biology, and Rebeccah Lijek, research fellow in microbiology and molecular genetics, are quoted.
Tobias Loddenkemper of Boston Children’s Hospital has created a device that can hopefully be used to track, warn, and eventually anticipate when seizures might occur, the first step in many to preventing seizure deaths. Loddenkemper is also an associate professor of neurology.
In the 10 years since the Personal Genome Project was conceived, the effort to use genetic data to improve medicine has exploded. Over the next year, researchers are expected to generate 85 petabytes of sequencing data from research subjects and patients. George Church, Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics, is mentioned.
An ambitious Obamacare experiment in cutting health-care costs led to a reduction of about 1.2 percent in spending on Medicare patients in its first year, researchers said, calling the savings a promising start. J. Michael McWilliams, associate professor of health care policy, led the study.
Richard Mollica, professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, authored this opinion piece about the Boston Marathon bombing trial as an exemplar of a meaningful approach to the healing process at all levels.
Angelo Volandes, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, authored this opinion piece about the need for new directions in improving the quality of end-of-life care.
It is increasingly common practice for researchers to scan DNA sequence data from tumor biopsies of cancer patients—the idea being that the presence of mutations might inform tailored treatments or prognoses. It is not common, however, to sequence these patients’ normal DNA, which, according the authors of a new study, is a serious omission. George Demetri, professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Daniel Haber, Kurt J. Isselbacher/Peter D. Schwartz Professor of Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, are mentioned.
Angelo Volandes, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, authored this article about the importance of planning and making healthcare decisions.
