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Regenerative medicine is one of the fastest growing biomedical industries in the world because patients are being cured of diseases that were once incurable…represents a new paradigm in human health because the vast majority of treatments for chronic and life-threatening diseases focus on treating the symptoms, not curing the disease…there are few therapies in use today capable of curing or significantly changing the course of a disease. New regenerative medicine is changing this by engineering, growing, and regenerating tissues and organs using biological processes similar to those normally used in humans…Cell therapy makes up over 60% of the regenerative medicine market…Pharmaceutical companies are building relationships with innovating regenerative medicine companies… Transnational supply-side economics is driving the market; there is low regulation and multiple offerings for numerous conditions, with some being offered to treat life-threatening diseases. Regenerative medicine has the potential to ultimately change the way medicine is practiced throughout the world.

…cryotherapy…treatments…have come under scrutiny after a Las Vegas spa employee was found dead last month in the chamber of a cryotherapy machine chilled by liquid nitrogen…Las Vegas police and Nevada state officials have opened investigations into the circumstances involving the death, but it has moved slowly because the industry is so new in the state that no one agency assumed responsibility for it…Nevada's chief medical officer said Tuesday that the Bureau of Health Care Quality and Compliance will assume responsibility for investigating complaints as the state health department takes over an expanded probe to determine whether or not the treatment itself is safe. The long review process is now only in its fact-finding stage, but Dr. Tracey Green said some form of education, regulation, scope of work agreement and/or licensure could ultimately be proposed…any rules or policies put in place in Nevada would mark some of the first regulations in the world governing cryotherapy.

Texas Medical Association wants Congress to intervene and make changes to the federal electronic health-record incentive payment program it's calling "meaningless abuse."…The group says Stage 3 of the program meant to get physicians using EHRs could jeopardize Medicare doc payment rules… wants Congress to lift what it's describing as the $31.6 billion program's “convoluted and tedious” meaningful-use requirements…TMA President Dr. Tom Garcia asked legislators to co-sponsor two bills to alter the meaningful-use landscape…One is the Flex-IT 2 Act...which would delay Stage 3 meaningful-use rules until at least Jan. 1, 2017. The other is the Transparent Ratings on Usability and Security to Transform Information Technology, or TRUST IT Act which is aimed at ensuring health IT systems perform better in the field.

Sherwin-Williams wants to paint a cleaner picture of hospitals…The company created a paint that it claims will kill bacteria -- a major cause of healthcare-associated infections in hospitals. Among the targeted bacteria are Staph, MRSA, E. coli, VRE, and Enterobacter aerogenes…"Paint Shield" claims to kill over 99.9% of these bacteria after they've been on a painted surface for two hours. It also reduces the growth of "common microbes."…It's one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in our nearly 150 year history of innovation…By killing infectious pathogens on painted surfaces, Paint Shield is a game-changing advancement in coatings technology...

Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline have agreed to work together on the development of a new version of the former's continuous processing technology for oral solid dosage drugs...Pfizer's portable, continuous, miniature and modular (PCMM) system...is designed to break away from the conventional batch manufacturing model used in pharma and towards continuous manufacturing…In continuous manufacturing, drugs are continuously produced in highly-automated, closed units that allow changes to the production parameters on the fly…The approach only allows production to be tweaked if quality issues emerge - avoiding the need to lose an entire batch - and also ties in with the shift towards flexible manufacturing of smaller volumes for specialised applications, such as personalised medicines…Pfizer developed the first generation of its PCMM system along with GEA and G-CON, and describes it as "an autonomous and transportable pod that may be quickly shipped from location to location and readily brought online to create a fully functional module."…it takes around a year to set up, compared to two or three years for conventional production lines.

This is the first large-scale study to reveal how doctors' notes affect patients when it comes to taking their prescriptions…the OpenNotes initiative, first conceived at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston…The program directly connects patients to their physician's notes through an online portal…Encouraging patients to utilize a Web portal to view their doctors' notes is a cost-effective and efficient way to influence medication-taking behavior…reminding them to read them before visiting their doctor is key to reinforcing the doctors' rationale for prescribing specific medications and dosage…increasing patient access to fully transparent doctors' notes should be on the radar screen of all healthcare providers…

Prescription drug users rose from 51 percent of U.S. adults in 1999 to 59 percent of adults in 2011, according to a new study…It’s hard to say why prescription drug use would be on the rise…we know that older adults tend to take more medications than younger adults, and so we’d expect prescription drug use to increase as the U.S. population ages…something beyond the aging…appears to be driving the increase in prescription drug use…New drugs enter the market and old drugs lose patent protection and become less costly...patterns of prescription drug use evolve with scientific advances and with changes in clinical guidelines and policies regarding drug marketing and promotion.

Work to begin in early 2016…Walgreens is poised to roll out Epic EHRs (Care Everywhere) in its more than 400 healthcare clinics across the country…The Epic platform will replace Walgreens' own proprietary EHR…The goal…is to...enable more seamless communication with health systems and local providers, and gives us enhanced capabilities to deliver better health outcomes through greater care coordination and interoperability…our clinics play an increasingly important role in healthcare, supporting the healthcare system, provider practices and patients' medical homes, care coordination can be critical. This will benefit our patients, clinic providers and partners, and serves as an instrumental part of our strategic growth plan…

Radical combination of antibodies and antibiotics could effectively clear up ‘superbug’ infections and TB, as well as reducing harm to healthy microbes…A precision drug therapy that wipes out bugs that hide in the body could help clear up persistent infections that do not respond to standard antibiotics…The treatment works by tagging antibiotics onto antibodies (antibody-antibiotic conjugate) which home in on pathogens and deliver a lethal dose of drug directly to the heart of the infected tissues…The strategy could transform the treatment of patients with recurring bacterial infections, such as the hospital superbug MRSA (methicillin-resistant S. aureus), which can be extremely hard to treat even with powerful antibiotics. The approach also raises hopes for treating relapses in tuberculosis patients, and chronic infections that can take hold after heart surgery.

When I wrote Healthcare’s Trillion Dollar Disruption, I recounted how a collection of senior executives assembled by Oliver Wyman representing every sector of healthcare foresaw a radical reshaping of the industry. They predicted that over the course of ten years major winners and losers would be created as one-third of the annual revenues of the industry shifted from one set of players to another…More important than the revenue shift is who would be the catalysts for a much higher performing system as measured by the Quadruple Aim. In this list, I highlight the game-changers. Some may also be big revenue winners but that isn’t the point of this list. After all, there are plenty of organizations profiting from today’s wasteful system, so revenue is only one metric of success. Rather, the actions of the organization are putting the wheels in motion for a massive transformation of the industry.

1. MassMutual will slow healthcare’s heist of retirement accounts
2. Collective Health will turn employers fully into the insurance companies they already are
3. Rosen Hotels will show how employers can transform the lives of their employees and their community with a great benefits plan
4. Iora Health will prove primary care is the linchpin to a consumer-centric health future and achieving the Quadruple Aim
5. Surgery Center of Oklahoma will be replicated to overcome severe price failure of healthcare services ranging from surgeries to chronic disease management
6. Oscar will demonstrate that their data science expertise will deliver a superior health plan package that is about more than just consumer-friendly packaging
7. Geisinger Health System will raise awareness of the massive over-investment in hospital infrastructure at the expense of community health