Typical Alzheimer’s neuroimaging looks at amyloid deposition and neurofibrillary tangles, but a new quantitative method uses arterial input to bring signs of functional disease into sharper relief, according to a study published April 16 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine . {read more here}

State Medicaid agencies that outsource administrative functions to foreign contractors could be putting personal health information (PHI) at risk, warns a report from the Office of the Inspector General.  {read more here}

Determining levels of consciousness in people who have severe brain injury is notoriously hard. That task may become a little easier with the finding that brain scans can help doctors identify whether patients in a vegetative or minimally conscious state are likely to recover to some degree.  At present, most hospitals use bedside clinical observations – such as shining light into the eye and a battery of other tests – to determine someone’s level of consciousness. However, experience shows these diagnoses to be wrong around 40 per cent of the time. {read more here}

Innovative companies drawing from ideas that transformed the retail, technology and telecommunications sectors are poised to siphon off tens of billions of dollars from traditional healthcare’s $2.8 trillion in revenue, according to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers’s Health Research Institute. {read more here}