Friday, October 17, 2014

Health Review Blog Micron & Associates: Studien kritisieren US-Medizinprodukt Genehmigungsverfahren


Informationen über die Sicherheit und Wirksamkeit von Medizinprodukten kann vor und nach dem sie von US-Gesundheit-Aufsichtsbehörden gelöscht werden, nach zwei neue Studien verbessert werden.

Eine Studie ergab viele US Food und Drug Administration FDA-Zusatzcode Medizinprodukte, die in den Körper implantiert werden sollen wurden nicht von öffentlich verfügbaren Beweise, dass sie ähnlich wie ein Gerät bereits auf dem Markt sind.

"Lassen Sie den Kunden aufpassen bevor man ein Implantat in ihrem Körper, denn es kann keine Beweise, das Implantat wird davon profitieren, und keine Studie für den Fall, dass es ihnen schaden könnte", sagte Diana Zuckerman, die Studie Hauptautor und Präsident des National Center for Health Research in Washington, D.C.

Der neue Bericht ist nicht das erste Mal Forscher, den Prozess die FDA wird verwendet kritisiert haben, um viele medizinische Geräte zu bewerten.

Im Jahr 2011 erteilt das Institute of Medicine einen Bericht, den Prozess der Medizinprodukt-Evaluierung, bekannt als 510(k) Fehlern behaftet ist und sollte ersetzt werden. Die FDA, die den Bericht angefordert, nicht einverstanden.

Der 510(k)-Prozess erlaubt Medizinprodukte zu schneller auf den Markt "im Wesentlichen gleichwertig" sind Geräte, die bereits verkauft. Bestimmte Informationen, die an die FDA über die Geräte gesendet wird öffentlich zugänglich als Zusammenfassung vorgenommen werden muss, schreiben Zuckerman und ihre Kollegen in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Für die neue Studie bewertet die Forscher die öffentlich zugängliche Informationen für implantierbare Geräte, die von der FDA 510(k) schrittweise zwischen 2008 und 2012 gelöscht. Da diese Geräte ähnlich wie ein anderes Gerät bereits auf dem Markt sein sollen, sah die Forscher auch die verfügbaren Informationen für die ursprünglichen Geräte.

Insgesamt waren sie auf der Suche nach Informationen über 50 Geräte zwischen 2008 und 2012 gelöscht und 1.105 zuvor deaktiviert Geräte.

Sie haben genügend Beweise für die Behauptung, dass acht (oder 16 Prozent), die 50 neuen Bauelemente weitgehend entsprechen zuvor gelöschten Geräte wurden gefunden. Derjenigen, die zuvor deaktiviert Geräte, nur 31 (oder etwa 3 Prozent) wurden von öffentlich verfügbaren Daten unterstützt.

"Die Studie stützte sich auf öffentlich zugänglichen Informationen, und wie von den Autoren erwähnt, diese Information ist im allgemeinen beschränkt, da Hersteller nur gesetzlich erforderlich sind, um entweder eine Sicherheit-Zusammenfassung oder eine Sicherheit für die Öffentlichkeit bereitstellen" die FDA sagte in einer Erklärung auf Reuters Gesundheit.

"Aber die FDA eine erhebliche Menge an Daten – weit mehr als das, was öffentlich zugänglich – um zu bestimmen, ob ein implantierbares Gerät unter einer 510(k) klar Bewertungen. Dieser Ansatz war den amerikanischen öffentlichen Brunnen durch den Ausgleich der Notwendigkeit robust Beweise, um Sicherheit zu gewährleisten, während Patienten, die sie brauchen rasch neue Technologien bringen", setzte die Anweisung.

Zuckerman sagte, dass die Unternehmen keine ausreichende Zusammenfassungen der einen Nachweis bereitgestellt werden, die gesetzlich vorgeschrieben sind.

"Ich denke, dies ist ein Zeugnis geht nach vorn," sagte sie. "Klar sind die FDA und die Unternehmen nicht bieten Informationen für Ärzte und Patienten, so dass sie angemessene Urteile auf ihr Leben auswirken können."

In einer anderen Studie in der gleichen Zeitschrift fanden Forscher unter der Leitung von Ian Reynolds The Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, D.C., dass Barrieren reduziert die Nützlichkeit von Studien abgeschlossen, nachdem Medizinprodukte von der FDA zugelassen sind.

Die Forscher fanden heraus, dass die FDA mehr als 223 Studien für 158 Medizinprodukte Anfang 2005 bis Ende 2011 bestellt. Einzige der Studien führten zu einer Aktion von der FDA als eine Änderung der Geräte-Bezeichnung.

"Wir ermutigen die Agentur gemeinsam mit allen Beteiligten zu bewerten, wie diese Studien effektiver genutzt werden können, um die Volksgesundheit zu verbessern," schreiben sie.

In ein Kommentar begleitet die neue Studie, Elisabeth Dietrich von der University of California, San Francisco und Marylands Secretary of Health und mentale Hygiene Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein schreiben, die die FDA hat bereits Schritte, viele der Probleme in den neuen Studien hingewiesen anzusprechen unternommen.


"Es ist wichtig zu erkennen und unterstützen diese Fortschritte, auch wenn die FDA Leistung weiterhin durch Forschung und Aufsicht überwacht werden," schreiben sie.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Micron Associates: My week as an Amazon insider



The first item I see in Amazon's Swansea warehouse is a package of dog nappies. The second is a massive pink plastic dildo. The warehouse is 800,000 square feet, or, in what is Amazon's standard unit of measurement, the size of 11 football pitches (its Dunfermline warehouse, the UK's largest, is 14 football pitches). It is a quarter of a mile from end to end. There is space, it turns out, for an awful lot of crap.

But then there are more than 100m items on its UK website: if you can possibly imagine it, Amazon sells it. And if you can't possibly imagine it, well, Amazon sells it too. To spend 10½ hours a day picking items off the shelves is to contemplate the darkest recesses of our consumerist desires, the wilder reaches of stuff, the things that money can buy: a One Direction charm bracelet, a dog onesie, a cat scratching post designed to look like a DJ's record deck, a banana slicer, a fake twig. I work mostly in the outsize "non-conveyable" section, the home of diabetic dog food, and bio-organic vegetarian dog food, and obese dog food; of 52in TVs, and six-packs of water shipped in from Fiji, and oversized sex toys – the 18in double dong (regular-sized sex toys are shelved in the sortables section).

On my second day, the manager tells us that we alone have picked and packed 155,000 items in the past 24 hours. Tomorrow, 2 December – the busiest online shopping day of the year – that figure will be closer to 450,000. And this is just one of eight warehouses across the country. Amazon took 3.5m orders on a single day last year. Christmas is its Vietnam – a test of its corporate mettle and the kind of challenge that would make even the most experienced distribution supply manager break down and weep. In the past two weeks, it has taken on an extra 15,000 agency staff in Britain. And it expects to double the number of warehouses in Britain in the next three years. It expects to continue the growth that has made it one of the most powerful multinationals on the planet.

Source: Micron Associates

Monday, December 2, 2013

Micron Associates, Online shoppers warned of scam websites



The UK government has warned bargain hunters to be extra vigilant when searching for deals online this Black Friday and in the run-up to Christmas, confirming that cyber criminals netted more than £12m online during the same period last year.

The UK government issued the warning on Thursday, also revealing that its Action Fraud hotline received more than 10,000 reports about active cyber scams last year. Each scam reportedly earned the criminals an average of £1,700 per victim.

Dave Clark, detective chief superintendent of the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, highlighted scams masquerading as deals on technology products, like the Apple iPhone and iPad, as being particularly problematic.
"Online shopping has revolutionised the way we buy our Christmas presents, with each year more and more people choosing to search for gifts over the internet rather than heading to the shops. However, the result is that online fraud is top of the festive scam list," he said.

Source:  Micron Associates

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Micron Associates - Forum to focus on GCC cybercrime



The seminar will discuss penetration, hacking attacks and advanced persistent threats, malware and spyware, denial of service attacks, risk scenarios in the cloud, social engineering risks, bring your own device (BYOD) risks, audits and risk assessments, key cyber security controls and BYOD best practices.

It has been designed to equip risk, compliance and fraud prevention professionals with the knowledge they need to combat these sophisticated crimes and mitigate the risk they pose.

The seminar is conducted in collaboration with the International Compliance Association, UK, and is funded under Tamkeen's conferences and seminars support scheme. "Increasing exposure of businesses to the Internet provides the advantage of publicising business offerings and promoting interaction between stakeholders," CBB information technology director Yousif Al Fadhel said.

"However, it also requires adequate security measures to be deployed in a timely manner to counter possible and reported risks to IT infrastructure across organisations. "It is hence mandatory for IT security officials to be well-informed about latest developments in IT security risks and remedies," he added.

Source:  Micron Associates

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Micron Associates, New e-crime centre in fight against growing internet scams



A national e-crime evidence centre hosted by North Yorkshire County Council, which has been set up and expanded to tackle the growing threat of internet scams, is to be formally opened next week by peer Lord Toby Harris.

The National Trading Standards E-crime Centre’s digital evidence unit (DEU) has recently doubled in size to increase consumer protection against internet scams and online fraud.
The lab has been extended to accommodate 4 more forensic analysts and a forensic technician, bringing the new e-crime unit’s strength up from 5 to 9 forensic staff.

Lord Toby Harris, chairman of the National Trading Standards Board, and member of both the House of Lords Select Committee on “Personal Internet Security”, and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, will formerly open the unit on Monday 7th October 2013

The new staff based in the county council DEU will work closely with the e-crime enforcement officers in York, hosted by the City of York Council. Together they constitute the National Trading Standards eCrime Centre’s e-crime unit. The new staff will help reduce turnaround times and enhance the support given to local trading standards officers and regional scambuster teams.

The expansion of the DEU forms part of the National Trading Standard Board’s overall investment in consumer protection. It represents a longer term commitment to improve trading standards’ capacity nationally to tackle internet scams and rip-offs targeted at both consumers and businesses.

Source:  Micron Associates

Micron Associates, New e-crime centre in fight against growing internet scams



A national e-crime evidence centre hosted by North Yorkshire County Council, which has been set up and expanded to tackle the growing threat of internet scams, is to be formally opened next week by peer Lord Toby Harris.

The National Trading Standards E-crime Centre’s digital evidence unit (DEU) has recently doubled in size to increase consumer protection against internet scams and online fraud.
The lab has been extended to accommodate 4 more forensic analysts and a forensic technician, bringing the new e-crime unit’s strength up from 5 to 9 forensic staff.

Lord Toby Harris, chairman of the National Trading Standards Board, and member of both the House of Lords Select Committee on “Personal Internet Security”, and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, will formerly open the unit on Monday 7th October 2013

The new staff based in the county council DEU will work closely with the e-crime enforcement officers in York, hosted by the City of York Council. Together they constitute the National Trading Standards eCrime Centre’s e-crime unit. The new staff will help reduce turnaround times and enhance the support given to local trading standards officers and regional scambuster teams.

The expansion of the DEU forms part of the National Trading Standard Board’s overall investment in consumer protection. It represents a longer term commitment to improve trading standards’ capacity nationally to tackle internet scams and rip-offs targeted at both consumers and businesses.

Source:  Micron Associates

Monday, September 16, 2013

Micron Associates article code 85230508839: China’s Net crackdown shows fear trumps reform


Say you are a Shanghai-based economist and doubt the veracity of China’s latest trade data. You put out a research report to that effect, one that creates buzz on the Internet and exposes you to something far worse than making a bad call: prison.

Or say you are a photographer in Chongqing and circulate images of a politician who loves Rolexes. Bloggers begin buzzing about how a modestly compensated public official could afford a stable of $7,000 watches. You, too, may end up in handcuffs.

What if overworked and underpaid Foxconn Technology Group workers churning out iPhones they can’t afford choose to vent online? How about an environmentally minded graduate student who questions the accuracy of Beijing’s air-pollution readings? Or a mother who lost a child in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake who complains in a blog post that repairs still look shoddy? Could all of these people get arrested?

Yes, according to a new threat from Xi Jinping’s government: three-year jail terms for Web comments deemed defamatory. This isn’t happening in a place of George Orwell’s imagination, but in a country many still think is destined for world domination. China’s escalating war on free expression is unfolding in ways even the author of the classic 1949 novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” couldn’t have dreamed up. It’s clear evidence that hopes Xi’s government would be serious about economic reforms are also fiction.

Few expected Xi to be China’s Mikhail Gorbachev, but the president’s crackdown is particularly poorly timed. Markets are looking for Beijing to roll out a raft of reforms in November and were hoping for them to be bold — a big bang that would set the Chinese economy on a more sustainable growth path. Instead, the latest Internet rules signal timidity rather than strength: The government has clearly been taken aback by the explosion in online commentary on microblogging services such as Sina Weibo and is desperately trying to reassert its control however it can.

A similar fear has resulted in a rollback of the campaign to clamp down on runaway credit growth — a refreshing sign of discipline that economists had cheered this summer. Li Keqiang, China’s reform-minded premier, can only go as far as Xi permits him, and the leash appears rather short. Despite Li’s pledge to rein in excesses, the broadest measure of new credit nearly doubled in August.

The longer Xi and Li keep the loan spigot open, the longer state-owned enterprises will dominate. Their primacy is the biggest barrier both to China switching focus away from sweatshops toward services and to ending corruption. Similarly, policing the shadow-banking industry is key to avoiding a Japan-like debt crisis. Yet too many Communist Party power brokers are making tens of millions of dollars off state-dominated China Inc. Beijing lacks the political will to irk these cronies, let alone inflict pain on a restive population.

Nothing would end this corrosive dynamic faster than a freer media and Internet. In May, a vice chairman of China’s economic planning agency lost his job after allegations of improper business dealings made the rounds among bloggers. This month, another official, Yang Dacai, got 14 years in jail after online photos of his pricey watches inspired a crowdsourcing investigation. That won’t be possible now that local cadres can aim politically motivated lawsuits at anyone with a camera and an IP address.