Boston Globe reporter Felice Freyer writes that a study by MIT and Harvard researchers examines how an executive order on immigration could impact the number of doctors in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Doctors from the countries included in the order “handle about 14 million patient visits a year…often settling in areas where American doctors are reluctant to work.”
In an article for The New York Times, Shefali Luthra writes about innovative solutions to combat rising prescription drug prices. Luthra speaks with Jose Gomez-Marquez, an instructor at MIT, about his lab, which promotes do-it-yourself medical technology. “If you have extreme health care circumstances, you will find extreme health care ingenuity,” Gomez-Marquez explains.
Writing for The Huffington Post, Audrey Henkels spotlights MDaaS (Medical Devices as a Service), which was co-founded by MIT alumnus Oluwasoga Oni. MDaas supplies and services affordable medical equipment for hospitals in Nigeria, which allows them to provide “critical lifesaving tools they need to improve the health outcomes,” Henkels explains.
A study by MIT researchers examines how the growth in pet health care spending can provide insights into the increase in human health care costs, writes Austin Frakt for The New York Times. Emotional treatment spending may explain “high and sometimes heroic end-of-life health care spending whether on your dog or on your mother,” explains Prof. Amy Finkelstein.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Visiting Lecturer Irving Wladawsky-Berger praises MIT’s Inclusive Innovation Competition, a contest that honors companies aimed at improving economic opportunities for all workers. Wladawsky-Berger writes that it’s heartening that MIT is “searching for breakthrough innovations to help improve [the] economic prospects” of workers impacted by advanced technologies.
A new study co-authored by Prof. John Gabrieli shows that the brains of people with dyslexia respond differently not only to words, but also objects and faces, reports Felice Freyer for The Boston Globe. The findings point to “the core biological difference in the brains of people with dyslexia,” explains Prof. John Gabrieli.
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.”