Health & Healthcare

Finding building materials that won’t harm human health is now simpler and easier with the introduction of Red2Green (R2G), a new platform that slashes the time and effort required to pursue the ambitious requirements of the Living Building Challenge by crowdsourcing and documenting key materials health data for building and construction materials.

Fortune magazine announced that Medtronic is included on the 2017 World’s Most Admired Companies list. The annual list measures corporate reputation among the world’s largest companies. This year Medtronic ranked third within the Medical Products and Equipment category, up from ninth in 2015 and marking the second year in a row in which Medtronic has been in the top five.

PUERTTO MONT, CHILE – Laying in a hospital bed, Jofre Marcelo doesn’t hold back.

“You come here scared to death. I don’t wish this upon anyone.”

After a heart attack, it would be anyone’s natural response. Thankfully, doctors at Clinica Universitaria in Puerto Montt, Chile, had the right equipment and expertise-at the right time-to insert a stent in Jofre’s 50-year old heart.

“That makes all the difference,” he says.

For the third straight year, Medtronic has been named one of the most innovative companies in the world.
The Clarivate Analytics Top 100 Global Innovator award honors the world’s most innovative companies based on the volume, success, protection and influence of their patents.

Novo Nordisk, a global health care leader in diabetes care and Discovery Education, the leading provider of digital content and professional development for K-12 classrooms, today announced the 2017 Super Health, Super You Community Health Challenge winners in celebration of thriving, healthy and active school communities across the United States.

Aetna, one of the nation’s leading diversified health care benefits companies, today released its 2016-2017 Corporate Social Responsibility report. This year’s report covers the 2016 and 2017 calendar years and provides an in-depth look into Aetna’s commitment to building healthy communities.

Over the past 20 years, JDRF has driven amazing progress in beta cell transplantation for type 1 diabetes (T1D). As we have seen, in a small subpopulation of people living with T1D, transplantation of beta cells can be, literally, a life-saver. Unfortunately, though, they require long-term immunosuppressive treatments, and most of those beta cells will be gone at two years, rendering these people insulin-dependent again. One avenue to overcome this is to produce the beta cells from stem cells, which have been modified to be immune to a cellular attack. In other words, making insulin-producing beta cells unrecognizable to the immune system. That’s what Elad Sintov, Ph.D., is trying to do, with a JDRF postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

Pfizer’s advances in oncology demonstrate the Power of Scientific innovation to help improve lives, particularly the power of Immuno-oncology (I-O). Immuno-oncology uses the natural ability of the body’s immune system to recognize and fight tumors. This past year, Pfizer continued to advance its work in I-O because we recognize the urgency of finding anti-cancer alternatives to help patients who need them.

Alcon, the global leader in eye care and a division of Novartis, today announced Alcon Cares Project 100, which aims to reduce cataract blindness by providing equipment to perform phacoemulsification (or “phaco”), a key step in the cataract surgery procedure. Alcon Cares, a foundation that oversees equipment and product donations to those in need, will give 100 reprocessed Infiniti units to eligible clinics in Asia, Central and South America, and Africa over the next three years, making it one of the largest eye care equipment donations of its kind.

As a teenager, Michael Sanchez would stand at the bedside of cancer patients as his mother, a hospice nurse, comforted them in their final days. It was something he would never forget.