Prof. Amy Finkelstein writes for the Health Affairs Blog about the need for relying on evidence to set health care policy, citing her own randomized, controlled study of Oregon’s health care system. “We need to rely on evidence from rigorous research—rather than compelling anecdotes—to get an accurate assessment of a policy’s effects,” Finkelstein explains.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Jonathan Gruber details the adverse effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Gruber notes that the law “expanded health insurance to more than 20 million Americans through several different approaches, including Medicaid expansion, subsidies for private coverage, the elimination of the ban on preexisting conditions, and an individual mandate.”
The Washington Post’s Karin Brulliard writes that MIT researchers have found that like health care costs for humans, the cost of health care spending on pets is rising. Brulliard explains that the researchers found it was “‘noteworthy’ that the parallels between the two systems exist even though insurance and government regulation…are less prevalent in pet health care.”
Washington Post reporter Carolyn Johnson writes that a study by Prof. Amy Finkelstein finds that expanding Medicaid access increases emergency room visits. “People who gained Medicaid visited the emergency room about 65 percent more often than individuals who did not gain Medicaid in the first six months -- and the trend continued out to two years.”
MIT researchers have developed a new technique for making vaccines using freeze-dried cells, reports Ed Yong for The Atlantic. Yong explains that in addition to producing medicines, the technique provides a new way of “detecting important diseases, like Zika and Ebola, without relying on laboratories or sequencing machines.”
BBC News reporter Atish Patel reports on a new study, co-authored by Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, that found informal health care providers in India can improve with modest training. The researchers found that those who had undergone training were more likely to “adhere to checklists after training and made big improvements in providing correct treatments.”
A paper co-authored by Prof. Amy Finkelstein finds that “pet health care in the United States has exhibited growth, accessibility, and end-of-life spending patterns that almost directly mirror patterns in the American human health-care system,” writes Vann R. Newkirk II for The Atlantic.
In this video, CNN spotlights how researchers from MIT’s Senseable City Lab have developed a robot, named Luigi, to collect bacteria from the sewers in an effort to better understand public health. "Sewers represent a unique opportunity where health data from everybody in a community is pooled together,” explains Prof. Eric Alm.
MIT’s Inclusive Innovation Competition honored companies for innovations aimed at improving economic opportunity, reports Deirdre Fernandes for The Boston Globe. Fernandes writes that the competition was an effort “to highlight partnerships between man and machine and drive more innovation to under-served communities.”
A paper co-authored by Prof. Amy Finkelstein compares human and pet health care costs, reports Aimee Picchi for CBS News. The study found that, “spending on human medical care was 50 percent higher in 2012 than in 1996, while spending on pet health care jumped 60 percent,” writes Picchi.
Dr. Mallika Marshall reports for CBS Boston that MIT researchers have created a robot that helps maternity nurses make scheduling and placement decisions. “What we found was that the suggestions of the robot were accepted 90 percent of the time, which was very exciting for us,” explains Prof. Julie Shah.
Wall Street Journal reporter Melinda Beck spotlights the MIT D-Lab’s emphasis on flexible business plans and designs when developing innovations for developing nations. Beck highlights two D-Lab projects, an effort to make low-cost sanitary pads available in rural India and SurgiBox, a “collapsible tent that creates a sterile space around the portion of a patient undergoing surgery,” as examples.
Eric Boodman writes for STAT that MIT researchers have developed a technique to produce biopharmaceuticals in remote locations. “Instead of making the drugs and then trying to keep them refrigerated over thousands of miles,” Boodman writes, the researchers, “want to give people the ingredients. These components don’t require refrigeration, and the instructions are as simple as they come: Just add water.”
In a Huffington Post video, Prof. Daniela Rus explains that the ingestible origami robot her team developed could enable incisionless surgery. “What we have developed so far is a proof of concept that shows that you could have tetherless machines that can do active and important functions inside the body,” she explains.
ABC News reporter Gillian Mohney writes that Prof. Lydia Bourouiba has captured footage of a person sneezing, showing how far sneeze droplets can travel. Bourouiba found that “large droplets tended to land within 1 to 2 meters (about 3 to 6 feet) and that small droplets could get as far as 6 to 8 meters away (19 to 26 feet).”