U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Medicine is a complex field. So complex that any given person can’t know more than a fraction of what’s going on. Keeping up with the latest discoveries is impossible. Machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence offer a new way of looking at medicine and a great power to automate medical tasks. At the South by Southwest conference event in Austin, TX, a panel of experts came together to discuss the state of medical AI and how machine learning can benefit both patients and doctors...

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National Nurses United is calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to enact meaningful oversight and public protections on the use of unproven medical technology that is rapidly spreading through the nation’s healthcare system...

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Washington’s life sciences industry has a habit of flying under the radar, despite the innovative and impactful work being done in labs and clinics around the state every day. But once a year, the Seattle Health Innovation Forum brings this work to the top by recognizing local leaders in health innovation, from researchers to startup mentors to those changing the way we communicate about health. The 2016 Health Innovator of the Year awardees include Ingrid Swanson Pultz, a senior research fellow at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design and the Chief Scientific Officer at PvP Biologics. She received the Imagination Award, which recognizes imaginative problem-solving in the health sciences...

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Ask orthopedic surgeon Andrew Jawa, M.D., when his total shoulder replacement patients can expect to put on a jacket without help. His answer is likely to include the exact postoperative week — with evidence-based variations due to each patient's age and condition. Jawa performs more than 220 total shoulder replacements each year at the Boston Sports and Shoulder Center. And his success relies in part on self-reported data provided by his patients at every visit, from the first preoperative appointment through every follow-up visit for the next five years...

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The common-sense wisdom about the most widespread artificial sweetener on the market, aspartame, is that it's perfectly safe. The substance laces more than 6,000 products and is added to diet versions of Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, and Dr. Pepper. It is also sold under the brand names NutraSweet and Equal. It represents a multi-billion-dollar industry. Popular pieces across the internet in recent years have declared that concerns about aspartame are just a bunch of hype. A pediatrician and writer for The New York Times defends aspartame and says he regularly gives it to his kids. Vox dismisses concerns about the sweetener and includes a video about how safe the stuff is...

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Early detection, we’re often told, is the surest way to beat cancer...Current diagnostic methods for other cancers are invasive and expensive, so the vast majority of cancer patients never realize they might have cancer until something goes wrong with their health...

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is investigating about two dozen cases of suspected cybersecurity flaws in medical devices and hospital equipment that officials fear could be exploited by hackers, a senior official at the agency told Reuters...

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