Big brother, big business

Marketing intelligence firms that serve pharmaceutical companies apply sophisticated networking and data analytics to inform their clients about the prescribing habits of physicians as well as patient behavior. “Doctors tend not to be aware of the depths to which they are being analyzed and studied by people trying to sell them drugs and other medical products,” Jerry Avorn, MD, chief of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in a New York Times article.

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Several key trends were evident at the Radiological Society of North America 2024 meeting, including new CT and MR technology and evolving adoption of artificial intelligence.

Ron Blankstein, MD, professor of radiology, Harvard Medical School, explains the use of artificial intelligence to detect heart disease in non-cardiac CT exams.

Eleven medical societies have signed on to a consensus statement aimed at standardizing imaging for suspected cardiovascular infections.