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Skin Care Attracting Top Doctors
Aspiring doctors put in countless hours and rack up thousands of dollars in student debt, but not all are aiming for prestigious fields like cancer research and cardiology. In the past few years, the most sought-after fields in medicine have been much more superficial: plastic surgery and dermatology.
Figures from the Association of American Medical Colleges show that last year, about half of medical students who put dermatology as their first choice for residency were rejected. In contrast, the acceptance rate for internal medicine was 98%, while that for family medicine was 99%.
And it’s not a matter of competence: many of those who failed to get dermatology residencies were top students in their respective classes. The reason is that dermatology continues to be a niche field, with less than 500 residencies up for grabs. Internal medicine offers over 5,000 residencies, while family medicine has about 2,500.
The demand is understandable considering the high price of aesthetic procedure. A Botox treatment can pay 20 times as much as a heart disease check on a per-hour basis, with the added perk of flexible hours and not being on call all the time. These work conditions are attracting the country’s best medical students, leaving primary-care fields to graduates of foreign medical schools. These doctors, although just as capable, seldom stay longer than a few years, choosing instead to practice in their home countries. This explains the growing shortage of practitioners in many other medical fields, which in turn contributes to the less-than-ideal state of American healthcare.
Current and would-be dermatologists see their specialty as more than skin-deep. According to them, because skin problems are more noticeable than, say, high blood pressure, they can cause psychological problems that can affect a patient’s overall well-being. And not all dermatology patients have superficial needs: plastic surgery is sometimes needed to restore facial features following an accident or when a tumor spreads to visible areas.
Another thing that lends credence to skin care is the rate at which technological developments and treatments are entering the market. Doctors have access to a wide range of tools to help diagnose and treat even the most difficult skin problems, and often, they don’t have to consult with other practitioners to reach a diagnosis.
Not all aspiring dermatologists are after the job conditions, although it’s definitely a welcome perk. Some are more interested in research, going after new treatments and crafting new procedures for diseases like skin cancer. In any case, if you’re ever in need of a capable doctor in the next few years, you’ll know where to look.
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Facebook App Helps Trace Virus Spread
Scientists at a Tel Aviv University (TAU) in Iran have turned to Facebook to help them track the spread of viruses and infections. Researchers Nir Ben-Tal and Gal Almogy at the university’s Faculty of Life Sciences developed an app dubbed PiggyDemic, in which users can pass a simulated virus onto their friends or vice versa. Their plan is to see how social interaction affects where a virus spreads and how many people it infects.
The method challenges the current system of tracking virus spread through mathematical algorithms. The latter’s flaw is that it assumes that every virus is equally spread from one population to another, which is hardly ever the case–social interaction always comes into play and throws the pattern off track. For example, according to Almogy, Africa has a high concentration of HIV while Asia and North America have the largest share of some flu strains. This is proof that viral infections are in part a social phenomenon.
By adding (digital) human interaction into the mix, the researchers expect to get a more realistic look at viral interaction. Facebook, the world’s largest social network with 800 million active users, is an ideal place for such a study. Once a user installs PiggyDemic, the app follows his or her news feed to see which people they interact with. Uninfected users are given risk rankings such as “immune” or “susceptible” based on their interactions with infected contacts. A network visualization tool allows them to see how the viruses are passed on from one person to another.
Besides tracking, PiggyDemic also doubles as a health guide for users who install it, offering tips to help users make healthy choices. It can also be used as a game, with people trying to “infect” as many of their friends as they can. Perhaps most importantly, the app has also been designed to track real-life virus outbreaks in real time by allowing people to report when they are actually infected. Such a tracking method can alert people in the network of the added risk.
The initial findings already seem to challenge current beliefs about virus spread. For instance, although the app is not configured to incorporate seasonal changes, the flu “virus” has spread more in the winter, the usual peak period. This suggests that in addition to environmental factors, social patterns can account for the rise and fall of different viruses through the seasons.
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NSF-DBA Hires Leading Pharmaceutical Experts to Meet Growing Demand for Training and Consulting
Increasing scrutiny of pharmaceutical companies’ Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) compliance and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs and dietary supplements has created a greater demand for high-quality pharmaceutical training and consulting services. NSF-DBA, an NSF International company with more than 25 years of pharmaceutical experience, adds five leading pharmaceutical specialists to provide consulting and in-house training services to help companies comply with international regulations and improve quality management systems:
Ed Arling
A fo…
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Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies Announced as New Name for MSD BioManufacturing Network
Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies has been announced as the new name for the former Merck BioManufacturing Network (known as MSD BioManufacturing Network outside the US and Canada) following completion of its acquisition today by FUJIFILM Corporation of Japan.
As previously announced, the acquisition comprises the facilities located in Billingham, UK (MSD Biologics (UK), formerly Avecia Biologics) and Research Triangle Park, NC, US (Diosynth RTP).
Yuzo Toda, general manager of Pharmaceutical Products Division, FUJIFILM Corporation, said: "We are delighted to complete the addition of thi…
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Flexible Phase I Study Designs: Expediting Early Clinical Drug Development
A new paper released by Quanticate provides an overview of some of the ways in which Phase I packages can be tailored to the needs of the specific compound and conducted more efficiently using combination, flexible protocols. It outlines the considerations that need to be made at the planning stage, and how to make best use of emerging PK and safety data to enable informed decisions regarding study progression.
To receive a copy of our new paper, please click on the ‘Flexible Phase I Study Designs’ link at the base of our profile.
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Bayesian Study Design Offers a Pragmatic Solution for Phase II Clinical Development
Quanticate has released a free-to-download white paper entitled ‘Bayesian Study Design: The Pragmatic Solution for Phase II Clinical Development’.
Statistically powered studies in phase II clinical development can be large and expensive, and may not be appropriate at a stage in development where much remains unknown about the likely magnitude of benefit of the compound under study. Pilot studies with small sample sizes may be easier and cheaper to run but are unlikely to yield statistically sound results.
An alternative approach, designing such studies in a Bayesian framework, enables cl…
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