LONDON – U.K. rapid diagnostics specialist Mologic Ltd. has been acquired by a group of philanthropists led by George Soros’ Economic Development Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and will be turned from a for-profit company to a social enterprise. The aim is to use the change in status to expand access to low-cost point-of-care testing for tropical diseases, including dengue, bilharzia and river blindness, as well at COVID-19. The name Mologic will be changed to Global Access Health (GAH), with the philanthropic owners saying they are to invest at least $41 million in the deal.
PARIS – Aleva Neurotherapeutics SA reported the first successful implantation of its Directstim directional deep brain stimulation (DBS) system into a patient suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The procedure involving this new generation of active brain device was performed by neurosurgeon Stephan Sobottka, from the Clinic for Neurosurgery at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus in Dresden, Germany.
Hoping to get Germany to drop its opposition to a proposed World Trade Organization (WTO) waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights, several U.S. lawmakers have asked to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel when she’s in Washington for a July 15 summit with President Joe Biden.
It’s more than 20 years since the tobacco firm Philip Morris International Inc. commissioned a controversial research paper, “Public Finance Balance of Smoking in the Czech Republic,” which infamously argued that smokers cut state health care expenditure by dying early. The paper was considered an outrage and led to a high-profile apology from the company, after being widely derided by politicians and commentators internationally. The company’s July 9 proposal to buy the respiratory diseases firm Vectura Group plc for $1.2 billion is already looking just as provocative according to U.K. politicians and anti-smoking groups, who are calling for the government to intervene to stop it going ahead.
The European Commission (EC) posted a new explanatory note on Tuesday that provides guidance on the codes set under the European In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR) to define the notified body (NB) scope of designation and qualification required for assessing a device. The clarifications explain how to use the different levels of codes to guide the proper allocation of resources, citing the anticipated challenges with limited experience and competency of NBs.
PARIS ‒ Kiomed Pharma SA reported it has signed an exclusive agreement with fellow Belgian company, Moveup SA for the development and licensing of a mobile companion application intended for personalized conservative management treatment for patients suffering from intra-articular osteoarthritis.
LONDON – The U.K. intends to take the positives from its response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a blueprint for developing treatments for a range of other diseases and the basis for a new 10-year strategy for the life sciences.
LONDON – Final results of the community pilot in Liverpool, U.K., that used the controversial Innova Medical Group Inc. lateral flow device to test all comers for COVID-19, show new cases fell by 21% compared to other areas of the U.K., because infections were detected early and people quarantined sooner.
PARIS – One year on from launch, Digitale Gesundheitsanwendungen (DiGA), or digital health applications, are gaining widespread acceptance in Germany. Digital therapeutics (DTx) have been available since 2020 to the 73 million people in Germany covered by public health.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidance for ethics and governance for artificial intelligence (AI) in health discusses several issues regarding regulation, including the question of transparency for the algorithm’s source code. The WHO paper is not prescriptive on this and several other issues, however, raising the prospect that regulatory entities will not be discouraged from adopting policies that run afoul of intellectual property concerns and thus impede advances in AI.
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