A press release from the FDA last week announced the approval of EMMA, or Electronic Medication Management Assistant, by Pennsylvania-based INRange Systems, Inc..

“FDA’s clearance of the INRange remote medication management system puts an important safety tool directly in the hands of patients and their health care providers,” said Daniel Schultz, M.D., director of FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health in a press release from the administration. “It will help take away some of the confusion patients can experience when taking prescription medications, and allow care providers to more closely monitor their patients’ medications between office visits.”

According to the FDA, a 2006 Institute of Medicine report estimated that medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people in the United States annually. EMMA allows healthcare professionals to remotely monitor and manage prescriptions stored and dispensed at the patient’s residence, from the comfort of their office or home.

EMMA features medication storage compartments, an audible alert when medication is dispensed, and a delivery tray. A Web-based backbone allows health care professionals to access information such as history of medication access, or to make adjustments to dosage frequency as needed.

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For those of us who took Spanish in high school thinking it would come in handy as the U.S. job market demanded bilingual employees, some critical thinking is in order.

There’s a country whose population of 1.32 billion, about 20 percent of the worlds’ total population, has overtaken the confining 3.6 million square-miles within its borders. This same country, whose economic and military growth have been making headlines, who despite its differing views on government has strategically placed itself on an elite list of nations growing in wealth and power, and is currently producing millions of goods on the international market, is now making waves in yet another sector in a big way: medical equipment.

According to an article on Bloomberg.com, a leading provider of data, news and analytics, China has upped its spending on medical equipment in every sense of the word. Preparation for a possible medical disaster means upgrading the old medical equipment currently in place in most Chinese hospitals. In turn, this means an eminent boom in the Chinese medical equipment industry, and investors everywhere are scampering to get a piece.

If speculation doesn’t make you wish you had learned Chinese when you had the chance, solid numbers should:

Chinese cities make up 80% of the world’s most polluted cities, according to a World Bank 2004 report.

According to the World Health Organization’s website: by the year 2030, heart disease will account for 31 percent of deaths in China, 24 percent will be from cancer, while 31 percent will be attributed to chronic illnesses.

The numbers are staggering, a bit frightening, and irrefutable. If a pandemic were to strike China, nobody will be safe. Our only weapons against such a tragedy will be preparation and vigilance, and China is positioning itself to adequately account for both.

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Medical equipment manufacturer Medtronic remains engulfed in an appeals case that has found its way to the Supreme Court, a case over ten years in the making.

In 1996 a balloon catheter made by Medtronic ruptured during an angioplasty. This led to a lawsuit over a variety of state tort law violations. “Tort” is just the fancy word for infringements or wrongful acts that lead to legal liability.

The manufacturer held that the surgeon used the device in a manner and situation inconsistent with its intended use and labeling when considering the patient’s particular condition. It’s like using a blow torch to light a small candle on a birthday cake. It may work, but you’d likely scorch the cake.

At the time, both the Federal District Court and a Federal Appeals Court ruled in favor of the manufacturer, saying that since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the device for use in the United States, a patient who is injured from the use of such a device cannot file suit against the manufacturer.

Since then, three different appeals courts have reviewed the same medical device made by the same company, and have come to two different conclusions about whether such a case should or could come to court.

The fall of 2007 will see this case in the halls of the highest court in the land. Who’s responsible for these types of incidents? Common sense tells us that someone should be held liable. If the federal government would relinquish some control and allow individual states to set standards higher than those of the FDA, yes we’d lose uniformity and would probably get caught up in all types of red tape. But wouldn’t that be better for consumers in the long run?

It’d definitely make me think twice about who I vote into office here in Texas.

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The following video demonstrates the features and benefits of the Scope MD model MD204 treatment recliner.

It seems more and more people these days are committing fraud by creating fake medical equipment companies and billing taxpayers.

Roberto and Mary Roman, both 53 of Yuma, Ariz., have been arrested on charges of defrauding Medicare to the tune of $695,000. They collected the money between September 2006 and May 2007. In less than a year, they made what many honest people don’t make in a decade.

Their plan was simple: obtain the names and account numbers of people on Medicare, create a medical equipment company on paper and bill Medicare for items that will never be delivered.

Where did the Romans go wrong? They were discovered when a man on Medicare decided to check his yearly statement and realized that he was charged for a piece of medical equipment that he never received.

Chief Assistant Maricopa County Attorney Sally Wells told an Arizona newspaper that the couple had made 1,400 such transactions. Her advice to Medicare patients: “Please check your yearly statement.”

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