Health/Disease Strategy

Biosimilars will have a significant impact on cancer treatment, with the potential to drive cost savings, but will patients and providers be accepting?

Targeted treatments of HER2-positive breast cancers have dramatically prolonged many patients’ lives. But treatment outcomes in clinical trial settings don’t always translate into comparable real-world clinical value.

Patient-reported outcomes are playing a growing role in cancer research and are poised to become an important part of regulatory review in drug development-and even routine clinical cancer care.

Expanded access or “compassionate use” programs allow patients to use investigational treatments, medical devices, or tests, before they have received FDA approval.

Determining what to measure, and how best to measure it, can be surprisingly complex-and appropriate metrics can vary between cancer types and patient populations.

Studies have found that getting diabetes under control early on has immediate benefits. Here’s how providers and patients can more proactively address the disease.

Personalization is the key to a healthcare experience that optimizes outcomes, improves the customer experience and, ultimately, lowers costs to the healthcare system. Find out why it’s especially key for diabetic patients.

Heart disease takes a heavy toll on the healthcare system, but promising new treatments are emerging

FDA’s approval of the first generic version of Copaxone for treating patients with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis has industry insiders contemplating the impact on the generics market as well as payer coverage strategies.

More than 750 government and private ACOs are now in place, helping healthcare transition away from fee-for-service. Find out what's working and what's planned for the future.

Only 5% of Medicaid-enrolled Americans account for 50% of total Medicaid spending, and the top 1% account for almost 25% of spending, according to a new study from the Government Accountability Office.

Even though e-cigarette smoking is on the rise, wellness programs are not giving smoking cessation nearly enough attention or resources, according to a new HealthMine survey.

Wellness programs are a strategy to control rising healthcare costs, but according to a recent survey, many wellness incentives are meaningless to participants.

The Affordable Care Act has led to community-based approaches for super utlilizers like health homes that appear to be making inroads.

Consensus is building on the promise of genetic testing and other technological advances to help individualize testing, prevention and treatment for better outcomes.

The number of deaths from prescription pain relievers dropped 5% in 2012, and new tools are helping in the fight against opioid abuse.

Research has been given a shot in the arm by Apple Corp, which recently expanded the use of ResearchKit to include clinical trials.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has taken big steps to curb the growing opioid addiction problem.

Health plans and providers play a critical role in maintaining U.S. vaccination rates and can help reverse the recent MMR vaccination-rate decline, a factor responsible for the recent re-emergence of measles.

New study findings suggest that an epigenetic test could be created to identify those individuals early in the process of developing diabetes mellitus, providing hope for preventing the disease.

Hospitals with high rates of certain hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) will have their Medicare payments cut by 1% for the 2015 fiscal year.

Providers and care teams working to improve the health of overweight and obese patients must keep hypertension detection and management top of mind for this population.

Researchers generally agree that intense, highly-coordinated care, with an emphasis on changing patient behavior is a key to improving outcomes and reducing costs for complex morbidities.

Approximately half of all adults in the U.S. have one or more chronic health conditions, and 75% of health care costs are due to chronic illnesses. When psychosocial issues like depression, low income, or lack of social support are present, the impact on costs is even greater.

Annual screenings for long-term smokers aged 55 to 74 will now be covered by Medicare, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on Nov. 10.

espite the fact that approximately 2.74 million patients used anti-obesity drugs in 2011, according to information services company IMS Health, the majority of health plans are following the lead of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and not covering them.

In many ways, autism is a nightmare condition for health plans. Its prevalence appears to be skyrocketing, it typically requires long-term treatment, diagnoses are being made at younger and younger ages, there is a plethora of therapies - some very expensive - and there's no cure.

The economic impact of an Ebola pandemic could reach $32 billion by 2015, according to the World Bank, while costs to the healthcare insurance industry will depend on how quickly the disease is controlled in countries with high insurance penetration, according to the Insurance Information Institute (III).

Focusing attention on these individuals can bring both short-term and long-term clinical and economic benefits

Applying a value-based design to high-deductible plans would encourage chronically ill patients not to forgo necessary services