Google May Start Venture Fund

Btw, Sergey Brin's wife is a former partner at health investment fund Catalytic Health. from NYTimes DealBook

Social Networking for Scientists

Typically, scientists have stacks of papers, protocols, and notes in their offices that they pass around as PDFs. Labmeeting is designed first and foremost as a document management site that allows scientists and students to easily upload all of those PDFs, organize them, search them, and share them. Scientsist can create groups, and invite other members of their labs to create a common repository of papers that can be accessed from anywhere. from techcrunch

a similar site is SciLink: With over 104 million relationships mined from literature, SciLink already knows who you're connected to.

Illinois Ponders New Ban on Cell Phones

Have you ever text messaged as you crossed the street? Or checked out your PDA? Or been on your cellphone?

Well, if the Illinois General Assembly bill known as HB 4520 ever gets signed into law, it will be illegal to use a wireless device while crossing the street. from ieee's The Risk Factor

More Patients Failing To Manage Their Medications

"Increasingly, people take their medications at home, away from hospitals and clinics. But most studies of fatal medication errors have focused on those clinical settings. We wanted to know three things: how many of these fatal errors happen at home; how many involve alcohol and/or street drugs; and are these numbers going up?"

For the study, the researchers examined all US death certificates from 1st January 1983 to 31st December 2004 (over 49.5 million), and particularly those citing fatal medication errors (FMEs, nearly 225 thousand).

They classified the deaths into 4 types of FME: domestic or non-domestic, with and without alcohol/street drugs and examined them with respect to the relative importance of alcohol or street drugs and the relative likelihood of professional supervision in the use of the medications.

The four FME types were:

Type 1 = domestic FMEs combined with alcohol and/or street drugs,
Type 2 = domestic FMEs not involving alcohol and/or street drugs,
Type 3 = nondomestic FMEs combined with alcohol and/or street drugs, and
Type 4 = nondomestic FMEs not involving alcohol and/or street drugs.

The results showed that:

• Overall FME death rate went up by 360.5 per cent during the 1983 to 2004 period. from MedicalNewsToday
  

GE Legal

A discussion with company lawyers. from the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel

Intel Gets FDA Approval Of Personal Health System

Expected delivery Q408, the system can be used to monitor blood pressure, blood glucose, weight, and many other critical health issues. It also issues reminders to patients, i.e. to take their medications. Intel has also recently set up a social networking website for patients and providers. from Information Week.

Social Networking Catches on at GE

Inside GE they describe this as the "post-email world." from John Warner at SwampFox

NHS selects Trillium Software to measure patient and clinical data

The Commissioning Support Service (CSS) of the NHS has selected
Trillium Software System from Harte-Hanks, to measure the quality of
patient, clinical and service data collected from health provisioning
services in the London region. Computer Business Review

VC investments in med equipment, vid comunication

Arbel Raises $4.5 Million for Medical Devices

Arbel Medical, an Israeli start-up, has completed a $4.5 million second funding round, the company said in a press release. Arbel develops the next generation of medical equipment for removing tumors by freezing. The round was led by Giza Venture Capital fund. Docor International invested $1 million, joining the other Arbel investors who include Giza, Ofer High
Tech, the Bridge Investment Fund, TRD and Fattal.

Qumu Snags $10.7 Million from V.C.s
Qumu, a provider of enterprise video communications, said Monday that it has completed a new a $10.7 million round of funding led by Advanced Technology Ventures and joined by SAP Ventures, Storm Ventures, Garage Technology Ventures, Halo Opportunity Fund and the Angels Forum. Qumu, which says its customers include Dell, Microsoft, and eBay, will use the funds to continue to accelerate its product development efforts and expand its sales and marketing operations.