medicine

Pharmaceutical company marketing negatively influences prescribing

Doctors’ prescribing habits are heavily influenced by payments, gifts, and free meals from pharmaceutical companies, leading to more expensive, less appropriate and more drugs being prescribed, a new Cochrane review finds. This can seriously harm both individual patients and health systems. Pharmaceutical companies use a variety of strategies to market and promote their drugs. This can include one-on-one visits by sales reps to doctors' offices and hospitals, gifts and payments including for example paid meals, travel costs to conferences, entertainment, consulting fees, honoraria for participation in advisory boards, and advertising.

York University ranks highly in key categories in THE World University Rankings by Subject

York University posted strong results in global rankings in this year’s Times High Education (THE) World University Rankings by Subject, competing against almost 1,500 universities across 11 subjects worldwide. York’s Osgoode Hall Law School’s held firmly with a 65th in the world spot, while rankings for programs in Medical & Health and Engineering & Technology […]

Novel AI technique able to distinguish between progressive brain tumours and radiation necrosis, York U study finds

While targeted radiation can be an effective treatment for brain tumours, subsequent potential necrosis of the treated areas can be hard to distinguish from the tumours on a standard MRI. A new study led by a York University professor in the Lassonde School of Engineering found that a novel AI-based method is better able to distinguish between the two types of lesions on advanced MRI than the human eye alone, a discovery that could help clinicians more accurately identify and treat the issues.