Drugs for Early-Stage Alzheimer’s (good New York Times editorial):

“The Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion has pro­posed low­er­ing the bar for approv­ing drugs to treat peo­ple at the ear­li­est stages of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, before they have devel­oped any seri­ous impair­ment or overt demen­tia. The goal is com­mend­able — to find ways to pre­vent or slow the pro­gres­sion of this ter­ri­ble dis­ease before it can rob peo­ple of their men­tal capac­i­ties. But the pro­posal raises trou­bling ques­tions as to whether the agency would end up approv­ing drugs that pro­vide lit­tle or no clin­i­cal ben­e­fit yet Read the rest of this entry »

Here you are sev­eral recent arti­cles quot­ing Sharp­Brains and our new Dig­i­tal Brain Health mar­ket report –which I’ll dis­cuss today at ESCoNS2:

• Sharp­Brains Data and Brain Games High­light Brain Aware­ness Week (Wired blog)
• Will a Big IPO Make Investors Take Brain Fit­ness More Seri­ously? (Pri­vate Equity Hub)
• Brain Resource’s Depres­sion Test FDA Fil­ing Expected Very Soon (Zacks)
• Head Games (OC Register)
• Per­sonal Neuro Devices mak­ing smart­phone apps that read your mind (IT Busi­ness Canada)
• The human brain in the era of sci­en­tific explo­ration (China Secu­ri­ties News)

Just a quick note: we’ll host a webi­nar on Jan­u­ary 30th to dis­cuss key mar­ket pre­dic­tions based on “The Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020: Web-based, mobile and biometrics-based tech­nol­ogy to assess, mon­i­tor and enhance cog­ni­tion and brain func­tion­ing”, our new mar­ket report.

Here are 10 pre­dic­tions, many of which will likely be real­ized before the end of 2013: Read the rest of this entry »

Israeli med­ical device offers new Alzheimer’s treat­ment (Reuters):

“Accord­ing to Alvaro Pascual-Leone, direc­tor of the hospital’s Berenson-Allen Cen­tre for Non-invasive Brain Stim­u­la­tion, brain stim­u­la­tion — or tran­scra­nial mag­netic stim­u­la­tion — involves a very low cur­rent applied to a spe­cific part of the brain and Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to con­firm a “dream team” of 30+ Speak­ers and Mod­er­a­tors to help answer the fol­low­ing ten core ques­tions on the future of brain health on June 7th and 8th. Please note that Sum­mit reg­is­tra­tion is open now, includ­ing spe­cial Very Early Bird rates until March 31st.

By the year 2015, …

1. What new tools and tech­niques will be avail­able to and widely used by con­sumers and patients to mon­i­tor their own Brain Health?
2. How will health­care providers mon­i­tor the Brain Health of pop­u­la­tions and individuals?
3. How will com­pa­nies enhance employee brain health and pro­duc­tiv­ity via work­place ini­tia­tives? Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: this is Part 3 of the new 3-part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

Work­ing with Health Care Indus­try Stake­hold­ers: Clin­i­cians, Pharma/Biotech, Pay­ers, PBMs, Lawyers, Medicare, FDA

Clin­i­cians seek clear val­i­dated “rules of thumb” that can be eas­ily imple­mented and fit into their work­flow and reim­burse­ment regime. Many are explor­ing “Clin­i­cal Deci­sion Sup­port (CDS)” tools on the web and solu­tions linked to “Elec­tronic Health Records” (EHR’s). CDC and EHR’s are seed­ing the ground for clin­i­cians to adopt robust Bio­mark­ers that are shown to be unam­bigu­ously clin­i­cally relevant.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: this is Part 1 of the new 3-part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

On aver­age, the med­ica­tions pre­scribed for brain-related con­di­tions ben­e­fit approx­i­mately 50% of patients. But which 50%?

Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine seeks to move away from the cur­rent “1 size fits all, trial and error” approach that has been nec­es­sary because of a lack of evi­dence. Instead, it focuses on Read the rest of this entry »