Author: healthadmin

Despite energy security and affordability being at the top of the development agenda, 655 million people around the world still lack access to electricity and 2 billion people use polluting fuels and cooking techniques, putting their health and well-being at risk. These disparities are disproportionately high in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 560 million people live without electricity and 970 million lack access to clean cooking. The latest edition, Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report, includes new data for 2023 and 2024 and shows that while most regions are moving closer to universal access, sub-Saharan Africa’s progress has slowed…

Recent studies suggest that higher relative birth weight provides evidence of improved cognitive performance in children and adolescents, even when comparing twins who share the same genetic and environmental background. Published in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatryresearch shows that in-utero conditions can have long-term effects on a person’s brain development. These findings demonstrate that early prenatal growth is important for outcomes over the first three decades of life. Previous research has shown that babies born with certain risk factors tend to have lower scores on subsequent cognitive tests. Two common risk factors are low birth weight and small head…

First Stop Health, a virtual care platform, announced the expansion of its Healthy Weight program in response to demand for GLP-1 and associated increases in health plan costs. This program integrates weight management directly into the primary care model, including GLP-1 prescribing when appropriate. New to the program is a cash payment access option for employers who do not currently cover GLP-1 prescriptions and a managed compensation program for employers who do. “The goal is not just to lose weight; it is to improve metabolic health and reduce long-term health risks,” Cole Barfield, M.D., chief medical officer at First Stop…

Artificial intelligence communications company Infinitus on Thursday launched a risk detection system that ensures AI agents correctly triage patients, regardless of the expressed intent of the interaction. The solution, called Clinical Escalations, continuously assesses risk during interactions so organizations can reclassify events as urgent clinical situations if necessary. Clinical Escalations uses the industry standard Schmidt Thompson Call Prioritization Index (CPI) framework to assign a severity score to each interaction. Ankit Jain, CEO and co-founder of Infinitas, told Fierce Healthcare in an emailed statement that many patients cannot identify when their “symptoms have reached the emergency zone” and recordings do not…

Artificial intelligence-powered platform TigerConnect expands its clinical communication platform with the launch of new scheduling capabilities. The tool, called TigerConnect Scheduling, comes with a number of features, including AI automatic scheduling, real-time AI-generated gap detection, conversational workflows, and intelligent allocation logic to keep scheduling balanced. “For so long, healthcare organizations have accepted schedule disruption as a fact of life that we have stopped questioning it,” Dr. Peter Stetson, chief medical information officer at TigerConnect, told Fierce Healthcare. “The average clinical manager spends hours each week on processes that should otherwise take minutes, and that time is not spent on patient…

Placebos, or fake supplements, may have real benefits for older people, according to a new study by psychologists at Milan’s Cattolica University. After taking the placebo pills for three weeks, participants saw improvements in both their physical performance and cognitive function. Surprisingly, the effect was seen even when participants knew the pill contained no active ingredient. This study International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychologyled by Diretta Balbiani, Alessandro Antonietti and Francesco Panini. This was supported by a PNRR grant through the Age-IT project. “This study is part of a well-established series of studies analyzing the role of the mind…

Legacy systems and regulatory hurdles slow health tech, but targeted innovations in AI wearables, telemedicine, and diagnostics are paving the way for 2026.

An analysis of data from the World Values ​​Survey of developing and developed countries found that national citizenship, national pride, and global citizenship all predict life satisfaction. Although the positive effect of national pride on well-being was weaker for individuals who strongly identified as global citizens, those high on both measures still reported the highest overall life satisfaction. The paper is scientific report. Identity is an individual’s understanding of who they are, where they belong, and how they relate to others. It is shaped by individual characteristics, values, experiences, and membership in various social groups. An important aspect of identity…

Get the health information and medications you need every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here. Good morning and happy Thursday. Let’s get started. New bill aims to expand access to methadone Today, two senators will introduce legislation that would expand access to methadone treatment by allowing physicians board-certified in addiction medicine to prescribe methadone directly to patients and pick it up at pharmacies. (Currently, the treatment is only available at about 2,000 specialty clinics.) The law was first introduced in 2023, but died in the House. “For too long, we have locked up methadone, an evidence-based,…

Power companies in the Pacific Northwest are furious that customers could be forced to pay for the costs of coal-fired power plants that aren’t producing power. This nasty dispute stems from the Trump administration’s continued efforts to preserve the U.S. coal industry. The owner of a coal-fired power plant near Centralia, Washington, which appears to have burned the last of its coal in December, said it was following federal orders to keep the facility open. now, Transalta Co., Ltd. is seeking tens of millions of dollars in reimbursement for its employees and costs incurred in keeping the 55-year-old power plant…