About RVL: Spotlights

Statin Drugs: Cutting the Risk of Heart Attack

In 2001, TIME magazine named Brigham and Women’s Hospital researcher Paul Ridker, MD, one of America’s Ten Best Researchers in Science and Medicine. In 2003, his work on inflammation and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or hsCRP, led to national guidelines suggesting hsCRP evaluation as a new method for detecting risk for cardiovascular disease. Read more...

Inhaled nitric oxide Treatment

For many years nitric oxide (NO) gas - not to be confused with the anesthetic nitrous oxide - was considered a dangerous pollutant. Then in the mid-1980s three US researchers, including Massachusetts General Hospital’s Warren M. Zapol, MD, discovered that the body naturally used NO to transmit key signals in the pulmonary, cardiovascular and other systems. Read more...

“Smart” Drug Infusion Pumps

Massachusetts General Hospital transformed patient care with the introduction of a “smart” drug infusion pump—an invention that was conceptualized and deployed hospital-wide at MGH and has proven highly useful in clinical care. The invention was motivated by an awareness of tragic events involving complex drug dosing calculation errors and misprogrammed drug infusion pumps. Read more...

HCM CardioChip™ Test

The HCM CardioChip test examines eleven genes known to cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a primary disorder of the myocardium that can cause sudden cardiac death. Developed at the Harvard Medical School-Partners HealthCare Center for Genetics and Genomics (HPCGG) the custom-designed microarray tests for genetic mutations. Read more...

Cacimimetic CaR Activator

Brigham and Women’s Hospital Investigators, Edward Brown, M.D. (Endocrinology) and Steven Hebert, M.D. (BWH Nephrology) discovered a novel bovine extracellular calciumsensing receptor (CaR) in 1993. The CaR is present in key cells that maintain calcium homeostasis in the body. Read more...

E-Poly™ Vitamin E Infused Joints

Total replacements for hips and other joints were developed in the late 1960s, but it soon became apparent that hip implants could start loosening about 5 years after surgery and would eventually fail completely. A team led by William Harris, MD, DSc of the Massachusetts General Hospital investigated this complication and found that long-term friction of the implant's head against the polyethylene-lined joint socket would break off small particles of polyethylene. Read more...

Enbrel®

Enbrel® (etanercept) is a fully human, soluble, tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor fusion protein based in part on intellectual property developed by Brian Seed in the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Molecular Biology. People with an immune disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, or psoriasis, have too much TNF in their bodies. Read more...

Integration of IT and health care advanced through multi-year agreement

Partners HealthCare and HP extended a successful five-year, multi-million dollar agreement to develop software and implement hardware and services supporting Partners' efforts to accelerate clinical genomics and advance personalized medicine. Read more...

Partners Innovation Fund Invests in lifeIMAGE

lifeIMAGE, a start-up company based on technology developed at the Massachusetts General Hospital, is focused on solving the diagnostic imaging industry’s most pervasive problem: the inability to access and share patient imaging information timely and efficiently across the boundaries of various healthcare facilities. Read more...