Editorial: If Texans' health care subsidies disappear, we need a plan

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Regardless of your politics, the possibility that fellow Texans and millions more Americans nationwide who bought insurance under the Affordable Care Act could return to the ranks of the uninsured is a serious matter.

Yet this is what is at stake when the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in King vs. Burwell. More than 1 million Texans who now have health insurance through federally run exchanges may not be allowed to keep their coverage.

Imagine the devastating effect if the cost of your health care premiums tripled, which could happen if the federal subsidies many count on suddenly disappear. Most people eligible for subsidies have modest incomes; many would be unable to afford any coverage without financial help, adding to the ranks of the uninsured.

Texas already leads the nation in the number of uninsured residents; the state doesnt need to toss more people into health care limbo.

However, if the Supreme Court hands down a problematic Burwell ruling, Texas lawmakers can ease the shock. State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, recently introduced HB 817 as a safety net. If the court says Texans cant receive subsidies through federally run exchanges, the bill would automatically trigger the creation of a state-run health care exchange that would allow Texans to continue to receive federal subsidies and keep their existing coverage.

The legal issue before the court is whether people who live in states like Texas that did not establish a state-run health care exchange are eligible to receive federal tax subsidies. Last spring, two federal appeals courts reached opposite conclusions. One court said the subsidies applied to Americans in all states; the other said they applied only to consumers in states that operated their own health care exchanges.

This newspaper understands some of the opposition to the Affordable Care Act and, in fact, questioned the programs cost as the bill originally moved through Congress. However, it is now law. Millions have based their insurance decisions on the program; a ruling would affect people of all political stripes in every House and Senate district. The well-being of those who enrolled should be protected.

Turners bill addresses only part of Texas broader health care challenge under the Affordable Care Act. Texas lawmakers also need to reform Medicaid eligibility so the state can draw extra federal dollars to cover the large percentage of uninsured low-income residents as a number of Texas business groups have urged. Unfortunately, in a letter to President Barack Obama, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Senate Republicans on Monday reiterated their opposition to expanding Medicaid while demanding that the federal government allow Texas to make sweeping changes in the Medicaid program. This appears to be a nonstarter.

Texas must begin to solve its myriad health care challenges. Turners bill is a pragmatic way to keep a looming problem from becoming a nightmare. It deserves bipartisan support.

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Editorial: If Texans' health care subsidies disappear, we need a plan

Twenty-eight countries have worse health care systems than Liberias

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I've been to Liberia twice and seen that impoverished nation's health-care system as it was overwhelmed by Ebola, which all but eliminated regular services for a time. (Here's the story I wrote about that.) So it was somewhat alarming to come across the notion that, under normal circustances, the quality of the health care in Liberia isn't even close to the worst in Africa, Asia and elsewhere in the developing world.

That's the main message in a new report from the nonprofit organization Save the Children, which ranked 72 countries on six measures of health-care provision for children, including the newborn mortality rate, the number of health-care workers per 10,000 population, immunizations and skilled birth attendance.

The result, Save the Children found, is that 28 nations fared more poorly than Liberia (which ranked 44th), including Nigeria (70th), Haiti (68th), Pakistan (57th), India (55th) and Kenya (47th). The two other Ebola-ravaged countries, Sierra Leone (46th) and Guinea (65th), also fell below Liberia. Somalia is last at 72nd.

In part, this illustrates the fact that Liberia had made some strides in maternal and child health in the 11 years after its civil war ended and before the Ebola outbreak began. But mostly it reflects the pitiful amount of money spent on health care in developing nations. The World Health organization estimates that $86 per person per year is the minimum spending required to provide essential health-care services. In 2012, Guinea spent $9, Sierra Leone spent $16 and Liberia spent $20, according to the report. All three figures were increases from 2006.

Germany, in contrast, spent $3,592, the United Kingdom $3,009, the United States $4,126 and Norway $7,704.

The report contends that for $1.58 billion -- about a third of the $4.3 billion cost of the Ebola response so far -- the health-care systems of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea could be brought up to minimum standards.

Ebola ravaged the three West African countries for a number of reasons, including unfamiliarity with a virus that previously had been confined to the rain forest; unsafe burial practices and denial among the populations of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization and nations such as the United States that have the capacity to intervene were way too slow to recognize the danger and help.

To date, nearly 24,000 people have been infected and more than 9,600 of them have died. In recent months, however, the number of cases has fallen sharply in Liberia and the situation has improved in Sierra Leone.

But there is also little doubt that a more robust health-care system in the three countries could have helped. Nigeria (which, as noted above, fared poorly on Save the Children's list) mounted such a response when the epidemic threatened to spread there, and stamped it out. Despite initial stumbles, so did the United States.

"The current Ebola virus disease outbreak in western Africa highlights how an epidemic can proliferate rapidly and pose huge problems in the absence of a strong health system capable of a rapid and integrated response," the report quotes the World Health Organization as saying in one bulletin.

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Twenty-eight countries have worse health care systems than Liberias

City Roundup: Health Care Zones, Land Trusts

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Not a whole lot has happened in Jackson in the two years since the Legislature passed Gov. Phil Bryant's health-care zone law in 2012.

That legislation,formally called Mississippi Health Care Industry Zone Act, gives the Mississippi Development Authority the ability to dedicate "health-care zones." Inside those zones, businesses will be eligible for tax breaks and incentives. That includes clinics, medical-supply manufacturers and retailers and telecommunication companies.

So far, state officials have approved 12 zones around the statebut, oddly, none in Jackson or Hinds County despite the presence of University of Mississippi Medical Center, Baptist Health Systems and St. Dominic Hospital, all within a stone's throw from one another.

Recently introduced legislation, called the Mississippi Healthcare Industry Zone Master Plan Act, aims to provide additional incentives to Jackson and other cities to help get their health-care master plans off the ground. House Bill 1634, which the House passed unanimously and the Senate Finance Committee will consider, would create several grant and loan funds that could pay for job training, health-care facility payrolls, municipal bond payments and state new-market tax credit allocation to MDA-certified master plans.

"The city can be a unifying force," given all Jackson's health-care organizations, including the hospitals, clinics and the Jackson Medical Mall, said Jackson Ward 2 Councilman Melvin Priester Jr.

The master planning process would begin with stakeholder meetings, market analyses and mapping of existing community assets in the health-care businesses, including medical facilities, educational assets and industrial parks. Master planners would also consider how existing plans, including city comprehensive plans, might mesh with a health-care master plan.

For example, backers of HB 1634 hope that it would help plans that are under way for a Jackson Medical Corridor, for which Andrew Jenkins of AJA Management developed a plan for a proposed project that would stretch the length of Woodrow Wilson Avenue between Interstates 55 and 220.

The legislation also has the backing of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Planning Association. In a letter to stakeholders, urging them to support the master-plan act, Mississippi APA President Donovan Scruggs said:

"As Mississippi attempts to grow a statewide health care cluster, our state has a tremendous opportunity to transform its competitive landscape and at the same time promote a primary objective of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Planning Association to nurture and grow communities of lasting value and diversity with choices for living, working and enjoying life."

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City Roundup: Health Care Zones, Land Trusts

Genome Studies: Personalised Medicine around the Corner?

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US President Barack Obama is proposing to spend $215 million on a precision medicine initiative, whose centrepiece will be a national study drawing on the health records and DNA of one million volunteers.

The term precision medicine refers to treatments tailored to a persons genetic profile, an idea which is already transforming the way doctors fight cancer and some rare diseases. When treating cancer, for example, doctors can nowadays assess any molecular abnormalities in the cancerous cells so that they can apply the appropriate treatment. Some types of abnormalities may be found in different types of cancer, and patients with these conditions will be given the same treatment. Studying a set of molecular abnormalities in a patient in order to prescribe a unique, personalised treatment for his/her condition appears to be the future of medicine and this means that going forward treatment will be based on peoples individual genetic maps

Barack Obama has recently put forward a funding initiative to support precision medicine with a view to developing technology that has to date been under-exploited. The aim is to change the old one-size-fits-all approach, as Jo Handelsman, associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, puts it, and to move towards personalised medicine using information from the human genome. Under the Federal funding proposal, $130 million will go to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for development of a voluntary national research cohort of a million or more volunteers to propel our understanding of health and disease and set the foundation for a new way of doing research through engaged participants and open, responsible data sharing, says the White House factsheet. This will be the largest genome study ever carried out at country level, and should open up amazing opportunities for the advance of science.

In the 1970s, the noted French biologistJacques Monod, regarded as one of the fathers of modern molecular biology, opined that the scale of DNA was too vast for scientists ever to be able to modify the human genome. Just six years later, the first genetic manipulations were being carried out. As recently as 1990, there was general consensus among genetic scientists that human DNA would never be sequenced, yet this feat had been achieved by 2003. Enormous progress has also been made in reducing the cost of human genome sequencing, which has fallen from $3 billion to just $1000 per person! In fact so mainstream has DNA sequencing become that the company ranked by MIT in 2014 as the smartest in the world was Illumina, a San Diego, California-based firm that develops, manufactures and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. Today the main focus of investment in digital health is onBig Data and analytics.

Some companies are now even specialising in combating ageing, including California startupHuman Longevity Inc., a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company whose stated goal is to tackle the diseases associated with age-related human biological decline. The web giants are also muscling into this field. Google is out in front via its R&D biotech firm California Life Company (Calico) on an amazingly ambitious mission to vanquish death, as CEO Larry Page put it. Clearly the White House is aware of the huge opportunities in this sector, hence the Presidents intention to channel Federal dollars into the search for DNA-based treatments.

Jo Handelsman predicts that significant scientific progress will result from studying the genome in a large number of people and merging this information with data from other ongoing studies. In fact she believes it will be a major step forward in how we see medicine. Some $130 million of the budget proposed by Barack Obama will be allocated to the NIH to fund the huge volunteer genome study. Another outcome of the initiative is that patients will be able to obtain lots of genetic information about themselves. We arent just talking about research but also about patients access to their own data, so they can participate fully in decisions about their health that affect them, underlined the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren. The proposal also earmarks $70 million for DNA-driven research on cancer and another $10 million for related certification work by the US Food and Drug Administration.

NIH director Francis Collins underlined that the United States is not looking to create a single bio-bank. Instead, the project will seek to combine data from among over 200 large ongoing American health studies, which jointly together involve at least two million people. The challenge of this initiative is to link those together. Its more a distributed approach than centralised, he explained. Meanwhile, in the search for data, NIH officials have met in recent weeks with administrators from the Veterans Health Administration, whose ongoingMillion Veteran Program has already collected DNA samples from 343,000 former soldiers. Obama also wants to allocate grants to private sector technology firms, and Illumina is likely to be an early beneficiary. As the famous work La mort de la mort (The Demise of Death) by French surgeon DrLaurent Alexandre points out, progress in the field of medicine in the 21st century is in the process of delivering a scientific revolution on an unprecedented scale.

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Genome Studies: Personalised Medicine around the Corner?

Genetically speaking, mammals are more like dad

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You might resemble or act more like your mother, but a novel research study from UNC School of Medicine researchers reveals that mammals are genetically more like their dads. Specifically, the research shows that although we inherit equal amounts of genetic mutations from our parents the mutations that make us who we are and not some other person we actually use more of the DNA that we inherit from our dads.

The research, published in the journal Nature Genetics, has wide implications for the study of human disease, especially when using mammalian research models. For instance, in many mouse models created for the study of gene expression related to disease, researchers typically dont take into account whether specific genetic expression originates from mothers or fathers. But the UNC research shows that inheriting a mutation has different consequences in mammals, depending on whether the genetic variant is inherited from the mother or father.

This is an exceptional new research finding that opens the door to an entirely new area of exploration in human genetics, said Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena, PhD, professor of genetics and senior author of the paper. Weve known that there are 95 genes that are subject to this parent-of-origin effect. Theyre called imprinted genes, and they can play roles in diseases, depending on whether the genetic mutation came from the father or the mother. Now weve found that in addition to them, there are thousands of other genes that have a novel parent-of-origin effect.

These genetic mutations that are handed down from parents show up in many common but complex diseases that involve many genes, such as type-2 diabetes, heart disease, schizophrenia, obesity, and cancers. Studying them in genetically diverse mouse models that take parent-of-origin into account will give scientists more precise insights into the underlying causes of disease and the creation of therapeutics or other interventions.

The key to this research is the Collaborative Cross the most genetically diverse mouse population in the world, which is generated, housed, and distributed from UNC. Traditional lab mice are much more limited in their genetic diversity, and so they have limited use in studies that try to home in on important aspects of diseases in humans. The Collaborative Cross bred together various wild type mice to create wide diversity in the mouse genome. Pardo-Manuel de Villena said that this diversity is comparable to the variation found in the human genome. This helps scientists study diseases that involve various levels of genetic expression across many different genes.

Gene expression connects DNA to proteins, which then carry out various functions inside cells. This process is crucial for proper human health. Mutations that alter gene expression are called regulatory mutations.

This type of genetic variation is probably the most important contributor not to simple Mendelian diseases where theres just one gene mutation [such as cystic fibrosis] but to much more common and complex diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, neurological conditions, and a host of others, Pardo-Manuel de Villena said. These diseases are driven by gene expression, not of one gene but of hundreds or thousands of genes.

The Collaborative Cross and the expertise we have at UNC allow us to look at different gene expression for every gene in the genome of every kind of tissue, said Pardo-Manuel de Villena, who directs the Collaborative Cross.

Source: sciencedaily.com

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Study Shows Who Benefits Most From Statins

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Newswise New research suggests that widely used statin therapy provides the most benefit to patients with the highest genetic risk of heart attack. Using a relatively straightforward genetic analysis, the researchers assessed heart attack risk independently of traditional risk factors such as age, sex, so-called good and bad cholesterol levels, smoking history, family history and whether the patient has diabetes.

Patients in intermediate and low-risk categories still benefit from statin therapy, but that benefit is progressively smaller because theyre starting at lower baseline risk, according to the investigators.

The research, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School appears March 4 in The Lancet.

For patients at risk of heart disease, doctors routinely prescribe statins, known for their cholesterol-lowering effect. In 2013, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association changed the guidelines for statin therapy, dramatically increasing the number of patients recommended to take it. The move has stirred debate over whether these drugs are overused, especially in light of increasing health-care costs.

There is ongoing debate over which individuals should be allocated statin therapy to prevent a first heart attack, said co-first author Nathan O. Stitziel, MD, a Washington University cardiologist and human geneticist. Some have said we should be treating more people, while others say we need to treat fewer. As an example of precision medicine, another approach is to identify people at high risk and preferentially prescribe statin therapy to those individuals. Genetics appears to be one way to identify high-risk patients.

Stitziel noted that this genetic analysis is not available to patients right now. More research is needed to validate the findings before such a test could be developed for clinical use.

Using statistical methods to combine data on 49,000 people enrolled in five studies, the researchers reported that individuals in the high-risk category have a 70 percent higher risk of heart attacks compared with those at lowest genetic risk. They went on to show that statin therapy results in a 13 percent reduction in risk in the low genetic-risk group, a 29 percent reduction in the intermediate group and a 48 percent reduction in the high-risk group.

Stitziel said the new results differ from past research that consistently has shown statins provide about the same relative risk reduction 30-45 percent depending on dose across all categories of patients.

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Study Shows Who Benefits Most From Statins

Proove Biosciences Launches CME Accredited Program with Medscape

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Irvine, CA (PRWEB) March 04, 2015

Proove Biosciences, a commercial and research leader in Personalized Medicine, is excited to announce the launch of their CME-accredited course entitled Incorporating Genetic Testing to Optimize the Management of Pain.

The continuing medical education program will be available at Medscape.com for the next year. The focus of the program is to teach medical professionals how to recognize inadequate pain treatments, integrate appropriate pain management techniques, and incorporate genetic testing into the management plan for treating pain (with a focus on the use and understanding of pharmacogenetics for individual patients).

It is estimated that 116 million American adults suffer from chronic pain, more than those affected by heart disease, cancer, and diabetes combined. Yet despite its prevalence, chronic pain is often under-recognized and under-treated.

"Pain management involves a series of critical considerations to be made by treatment providers: the accurate assessment and diagnosis of pain, the assignment of an appropriate treatment plan, the screening of patients for contraindications, and optimization of the selection, dosage, and frequency of medications. These evaluations are difficult to make accurately due to the large variability and subjectivity innate in such assessments. However, emerging data demonstrates the importance of pharmacogenetics in tailoring clinical decisions and targeting treatment plans towards individual variability, states Svetlana Kantorovich, Ph.D., Director of Clinical & Scientific Affairs at Proove Biosciences. "Despite the fact that pain and addiction have known genetic components, genetic testing is not part of the standard of care."

Proove Biosciences proprietary genetic testing can provide physicians with information to objectively identify responders versus non-responders to specific medications, improve medication efficacy, and avoid adverse drug events. Importantly, the objective screening of patients at risk for opioid abuse and misuse is of paramount importance due to skyrocketing healthcare costs and emergency department visits resulting from nonmedical use of prescription opioids.

About Proove Biosciences Our Mission is to Change the Future of Medicine. Proove is the proof to improve healthcare decisions. We seek to realize a future when clinicians look back and wonder how they couldve ever prescribed medications without knowing how a patient would respond. With offices in Southern California and the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, the Company is the research leader investigating and publishing data on the genetics of personalized pain medicine with clinical research sites across the United States. Physicians use Proove Biosciences testing to improve outcomes both safety and efficacy of medical treatment. From a simple cheek swab collected in the office, Proove performs proprietary genetic tests in its CLIA-certified laboratory to identify patients at risk for misuse of prescription pain medications and evaluate their metabolism of medications. For more information, please visit http://www.proove.com or call toll free 855-PROOVE-BIO (855-776-6832).

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Proove Biosciences Launches CME Accredited Program with Medscape

UK Bishops voice opposition to human genetic engineering | Newsbreak 2-26-2015 – Video

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UK Bishops voice opposition to human genetic engineering | Newsbreak 2-26-2015
UK Catholic Bishops voice opposition to House of Lords approval of genetic modification to the Human germ line. -Archdiocese of Detroit #39;s central services are settling into their new space....

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UK Bishops voice opposition to human genetic engineering | Newsbreak 2-26-2015 - Video

Gene Therapy Market Report 2014-2024 – Technologies, Markets and Companies

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DUBLIN, Mar. 03, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --Research and Markets

(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/gxqhg9/gene_therapy) has announced the addition of Jain PharmaBiotech's new report "Gene Therapy - Technologies, Markets and Companies" to their offering.

Gene therapy technologies are described in detail including viral vectors, nonviral vectors and cell therapy with genetically modified vectors. Gene therapy is an excellent method of drug delivery and various routes of administration as well as targeted gene therapy are described. There is an introduction to technologies for gene suppression as well as molecular diagnostics to detect and monitor gene expression.

Clinical applications of gene therapy are extensive and cover most systems and their disorders. Full chapters are devoted to genetic syndromes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurological disorders and viral infections with emphasis on AIDS. Applications of gene therapy in veterinary medicine, particularly for treating cats and dogs, are included.

Research and development is in progress in both the academic and the industrial sectors. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the US is playing an important part. As of 2014, over 2050 clinical trials have been completed, are ongoing or have been approved worldwide.A breakdown of these trials is shown according to the geographical areas and applications.

Since the death of Jesse Gelsinger in the US following a gene therapy treatment, the FDA has further tightened the regulatory control on gene therapy. A further setback was the reports of leukemia following use of retroviral vectors in successful gene therapy for adenosine deaminase deficiency. Several clinical trials were put on hold and many have resumed now. The report also discusses the adverse effects of various vectors, safety regulations and ethical aspects of gene therapy including germline gene therapy.

The markets for gene therapy are difficult to estimate as there is only one approved gene therapy product and it is marketed in China since 2004. Gene therapy markets are estimated for the years 2014-2024. The estimates are based on epidemiology of diseases to be treated with gene therapy, the portion of those who will be eligible for these treatments, competing technologies and the technical developments anticipated in the next decades. In spite of some setbacks, the future for gene therapy is bright.The markets for DNA vaccines are calculated separately as only genetically modified vaccines and those using viral vectors are included in the gene therapy markets

The voluminous literature on gene therapy was reviewed and selected 750 references are appended in the bibliography.The references are constantly updated. The text is supplemented with 75 tables and 15 figures.

Profiles of 181 companies involved in developing gene therapy are presented along with 223 collaborations. There were only 44 companies involved in this area in 1995. In spite of some failures and mergers, the number of companies has increased more than 4-fold within a decade.

Key Topics Covered:

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Gene Therapy Market Report 2014-2024 - Technologies, Markets and Companies

Global Gene Therapy Market Report 2015-2025 – Extensive Study on the Marketed and Pipeline Gene Therapies

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DUBLIN, Mar. 03, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --Research and Markets

(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/rcv4lq/gene_therapy) has announced the addition of the "Gene Therapy Market, 2015 - 2025" report to their offering.

The "Gene Therapy Market, 2015-2025" report provides an extensive study on the marketed and pipeline gene therapies. A lot of research has been carried out in this field for over a decade but there are only five approved therapies (four available in Asian markets; one approved in the EU). There are many promising therapies which are currently being developed worldwide; the approach is likely to result in several commercial success stories in the foreseen future. The report covers various aspects, such as key players, marketed gene therapy products, products in clinical / pre-clinical research, associated ethical issues, likely future developments and upcoming opportunities for a variety of stakeholders.

Several disorders that arise inside the body are a result of either a direct genetic aberration or a dysfunctional/non-functional protein. The attempt to use nucleic acids to correct or delete the genes causing a particular disease is known as gene therapy. Although gene therapy has not contributed significantly to the global pharmaceutical market yet, it is anticipated to grow at a fast pace over the next decade.

Gendicine, developed by SiBiono GeneTech, was the foremost gene therapy that entered market in 2004 in China. Since then four more therapies have received approval in China, Philippines, Russia and the EU. This number for approved / marketed therapies seems weak at present; however, the strong and highly populated pipeline holds tremendous potential. There are 12 gene therapies in late stage of clinical development for the treatment of cancer, ocular and cardiovascular disorders.

There are several concerns that remain to be answered; examples include insertional mutagenesis, treatment of multigene disorders, curbing the risk of immune reactions, eugenics, high cost of therapy and ethical concerns related to making alterations at the genetic level. Despite this, gene therapy does offer a ray of hope for patients who either have no treatment options or show no benefits with drugs that are currently available. Such a benefit far outweighs any disadvantages that may be associated with this upcoming therapeutic field.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Preface

2. Executive Summary

3. Introduction

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Global Gene Therapy Market Report 2015-2025 - Extensive Study on the Marketed and Pipeline Gene Therapies

Futurist Jack Uldrich to Address Global Business Trends in Agriculture for CCC

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Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) March 04, 2015

According to futurist Jack Uldrich, "There are several new technologies and global business trends in computer processing, data storage, bandwidth, the sequencing of genomes, advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics that are going to double every year of this decade. The impact of these advances on agriculture will be vast and the changes are going to feel like a tsunami to some. Preparing farmers and leaders in agriculture for these changes is paramount."

Uldrich, who has addressed the PMA, AgConnect, Case IH, Minnesota Dairy Farmers Association and UnitedAg, among others in recent months, is passionate in his pursuit to prepare people in a wide variety of other industries as well. Uldrich is a regular speaker for healthcare, education, energy, finance, retail and manufacturing events and firmly believes that creativity and action are more powerful and versatile than knowledge.

But when it comes to the future of agriculture, Uldrich hits on hard hitting topics like GMOs, urban agriculture and sensor technology. In his blog post, A Futurist's Outlook: Five Technological trends in Agriculture Uldrich says, "consider just one recent advance: a new nanoparticle vaccine. If successful, this nanotechnology-enhanced treatment will allow cattle to receive a single vaccine for a multiple number of diseases, including bovine viral diarrhea, bovine ephemeral fever and cattle tick fever."

Following his keynote in Banff, Uldrich will address The Farm Credit Bank of Texas in Charleston, SC on March 5th and the Indiana Farm Buerau in Indianapolis on March 6th. Parties interested in learning more about Jack Uldrich, his books, his daily blog or his speaking availability are encouraged to visit his website.

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Futurist Jack Uldrich to Address Global Business Trends in Agriculture for CCC

Futurist: Wearables will explode after Apple Watch debut

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Mar 05, 2015 - 12:42 AM EST AAPL: 128.937 (-0.423, -0.33%) | NASDAQ: 4972.82 (-7.09, -0.14%)

Tuesday, March 3, 2015 8:28 am 7 Comments

It will only take a small percentage of Apple fans to buy a smartwatch to create massive sales numbers, Burrus writes. In addition, prospective buyers are likely to be influenced by social media as their friends and family members post information about their smartwatch usage.

MacDailyNews Take: Exactly. Plus, as people see others using Apple Pay via their Apple Watches, the device will sell itself.

Burrus writes, I predict that over the next five years, every business process, including how we market, sell, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train, and educate, will be transformed by mobile devices and wearables. Niche markets are sure to drive the accelerated growth of wearables long into the future.

Read more in the full article with an excellent example of how Apple Watch could be used by Baby Boomers children who act as caregivers for their parents here.

MacDailyNews Take: Burrus gets it.

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Futurist: Wearables will explode after Apple Watch debut