life sciences : Buzz

Forbes recently interviewed the owner of a company that redesigned WellDoc's mobile app. Based in Baltimore, WellDoc has created the first FDA-approved app to manage diabetes.

In an article titled "6 Things You Should Do When Designing for Mobile," Forbes chats with Moment Design Inc. Principal John Payne about redesigning the WellDoc app so it can be commercialized.

Holding a design charette, or a collaborative approach to design, and gathering insights about the user experience, were among Payne's recommendations. Read the entire story here. 

For the first time in 21 years, Johns Hopkins Hospital slipped from the No. 1 rank on U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals. Johns Hopkins fell to No. 2 while Massachusetts General Hospital took the coveted No. 1 spot. 
 
The battle for first was very close. Both hospitals had 30 honor roll points, but Massachusetts General claimed first with its 16 nationally ranked specialty programs, compared with Hopkins’ 15.
 
Still, Hopkins didn't do too shabbily. The hospital is ranked No. 1 in Maryland and the Baltimore metro area. Five of Hopkins’ 15 nationally ranked specialty medical programs are the best of the country: neurology and neurosurgery, rheumatology, geriatrics, psychiatry, and ear, nose and throat.
 
Rounding out the top five hospitals were the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
 
See the complete list here. 

US President Barack Obama? Check. That British crooner who swept the Grammy awards this year. Check.

Not surprising finds on Time's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. 

There's one that Baltimoreans can be proud of. Freeman A Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, made the list that even Mark Zuckerberg was left out of. 

"But perhaps the most envied science program in the country is at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County," Time writes. "That's where Freeman A. Hrabowski III, 61, has spent 20 years as president turning a humble commuter school into one of the nation's leading sources of African Americans who get Ph.D.s in science and engineering." 

You can read more about him here.  

Johns Hopkins University dedicated its new $1.1 billion hospital this month and Hopkins alum and major donor New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand for the ceremony. 

"The 205-room Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center features 10 surgical suites, a 45-bed neonatal intensive care unit," the Wall Street Journal writes.

"Bloomberg, 70 years old, graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1964 with a degree in engineering," the Journal writes. "He is the single-largest donor in the university’s history, giving more than $800 million since 1965 and contributing $120 million to the construction of the hospital."

Bloomberg Philanthropies funded 500 works of art, the paper writes. You can read the rest of the story here. 

Baltimore leads the nation in overall hospital care, according to a report from ratings service HealthGrades. 

The survey got Baltimore national attention from a variety of news outlets, including U.S. News & World Report, which ran a HealthDay News item on its website. 

"Baltimore had nine top-performing hospitals out of 19 eligible hospitals in the city," the website says.

Phoenix, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Richmond, Va.; and Cincinnati rounded out the top five. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

The Swedes have been at it again, handing out prizes to American researchers. It ain't a Noble Prize, but the work of Rita Colwell, a professor at the University of Maryland and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath has won the Stockholm Water Prize for her research that has helped solve many water-related public health problems including cholera.


Here's an excerpt

"Colwell, 76, received the award for her "numerous seminal contributions towards solving the world's water and water-related public health problems," the jury of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.

Her work, especially on preventing the spread of cholera, "has established the basis for environmental and infectious disease risk assessment used around the world" and "is of the utmost global importance," it added in a statement.

The 76-year-old professor at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health was also honoured for being one of the first to study "the impact of climate change on the spread of disease," SIWI scientific director Per-Arne Malmqvist told a gathering in Stockholm where the prize was announced."

Read the entire article here.