This local report from the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer, near Cisco System’s Research Triangle Park campus, is a bit of a puff piece.  It opens pleasantly with one of Cisco’s 4,300 Research Triangle Park employees being examined by a Cisco Health Center physician in San Jose, CA via Cisco’s Health Presence telemedicine platform that incorporates a high-res camera, electronic stethoscope, and other remote examining devices.  But here’s the nugget justifying these surely money-losing tests in far-flung rural health systems in California and the Southwest: 

Whizzing ’round the business, pharma and now senior living business sites (but not eHealth) was a recent announcement by pharma giant Pfizer and Acacia Living on ‘a strategic alliance to develop an innovative holistic technology solution [editor emphasis] dedicated to helping seniors… Read moreMystery du jour: Pfizer, Acacia Living and their 'holistic technology solution'

The (UK) Times Online Health goes a bit over the top with the lead (smartphones are a long way from being a ‘doctor in your pocket’) and subhead (‘Will we all become iPho-chondriacs?’), but otherwise it’s a lively, current consumer-oriented overview of how… Read moreTimes Online Health: smartphones r doc in poc

The CNN.com headline does make you want to reach for your favorite pain reliever, but it’s actually a deft roundup of technologies that make sure you take your meds.  Proteus Biomedical (with their $24 million Novartis investment) and their pill sensors/skin patch… Read more'Tattletale pills and bottles'

Since we’ve been keeping tabs on Proteus Biomedical — lately, its major investment from Novartis (13 Jan), —The Economist now digs and finds some more entrants.  Philips is now promoting an ‘intelligent pill’ and a US startup called MicroCHIPS is developing implants that hold… Read moreMore on microchips and pills

Do you really know what nanotechnology means?  Trusting that our readership will not find this tangential to our focus, this Opinion article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal (no subscription required to view) on the ‘father of nanotechnology’, Richard Feynman (who… Read moreWhat's it all about, nanotechnology?

Wall Street Journal:  We’ve all been fond of categorizing medication dispensers and medminders, no matter how sophisticated, with the qualifier that there is no real way to determine whether the meds have actually been taken by the patient.  Now, there may be a way. … Read more"Creepy" medication compliance via microchips in pills