Health and Medicine

The number of new drug approvals has remained reasonably steady for the past 50 years at around 20 to 30 per year, while at the same time the total spending on health-related research and development has tripled since 1990. There ...

In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other ...

Advances in technologies and knowledge are creating new avenues for research and opportunities for the discovery and clinical development of innovative therapies and diagnostics. However, despite these opportunities, only a small fraction of investigational products are successfully developed into cures ...

There is growing recognition that the United States' clinical trials enterprise (CTE) faces great challenges. There is a gap between what is desired - where medical care is provided solely based on high quality evidence - and the reality - ...

As a number of diseases emerge or reemerge thus stimulating new vaccine development opportunities to help prevent those diseases, it can be especially difficult for decision makers to know where to invest their limited resources. Therefore, it is increasingly important ...

The growing use of nuclear medicine, the potential expansion of nuclear power generation, and the urgent needs to protect the nation against external nuclear threats, to maintain our nuclear weapons stockpile, and to manage the nuclear wastes generated in past ...

Technologies collectively called omics enable simultaneous measurement of an enormous number of biomolecules; for example, genomics investigates thousands of DNA sequences, and proteomics examines large numbers of proteins. Scientists are using these technologies to develop innovative tests to detect disease ...

An estimated 48 percent of the population takes at least one prescription drug in a given month. Drugs provide great benefits to society by saving or improving lives. Many drugs are also associated with side effects or adverse events, some ...

An estimated 8.8 million people fell ill with tuberculosis (TB) in 2010 and 1.4 million died from the disease. Although antibiotics to treat TB were developed in the 1950s and are effective against a majority of TB cases, resistance to ...

The number of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in the United States is growing each year largely due both to advances in treatment that allow HIV-infected individuals to live longer and healthier lives and due to a steady number of ...