Bioinks are developed using various polymers with crosslinkers. The crosslinkers play a crucial role in the formation of bioinks, which can be natural or synthetic (ionic, chemical, photo, etc.). However, extensive usage of crosslinkers limits the clinical application of bioinks due to compromising the ideal properties of bioinks, such as cytocompatibility, biodegradability, and biomechanical properties. Therefore, the potential solution to this problem is utilizing the click chemistry approach. The click chemistry strategy can achieve efficient bio-inks without compromising their intrinsic and optimal characteristics, as click reactions are rapid, spontaneous, and bioorthogonal, favoring the gelation time, rate of degradation, and cell viability.

Patient experience represents a fundamental dimension of healthcare quality that extends beyond clinical excellence and treatment accessibility. It encompasses how patients perceive and navigate their care journey, including their understanding of information, sense of being heard, continuity of support, and attention to practical, emotional, and social needs. This concept proves particularly critical in chronic disease management, which demands sustained follow-up and active patient participation. For healthcare providers, optimizing patient experience serves as a strategic lever to better understand individual needs, enhance care coordination, and foster patient engagement. Distinguishing patient experience from experiential knowledge—lived reality versus insights derived from it—enables organizations to capture authentic perspectives and implement meaningful improvements throughout care pathways.

France's healthcare system faces a critical sustainability challenge despite significant investment. With spending at 333 billion euros representing 11.4% of GDP and growing at 3.6% annually, the system struggles to convert financial resources into tangible health outcomes and patient experiences. Structural inefficiencies manifest through increasing care access tensions, fragmented care pathways, and professional burnout. Social security deficits reached 21.6 billion euros in 2025, with projections indicating potential healthcare insurance deficits of 41 billion euros by 2030 without major reforms. Rather than debating budgetary expansion versus rationing, France must adopt a Value-Based Healthcare approach, prioritizing the transformation of each euro spent into measurable health results and improved patient care delivery.

Un manque de coordination des soins ou de communication peut être à l'origine de toute une série de problèmes, comme par exemple des examens réalisés en double, ...

Le Français Withings frappe un grand coup outre-Atlantique, puisque la medtech fondée par Éric Carreel devient la seule entreprise européenne retenue par les autorités américaines pour le lancement d'un tout nouveau programme de santé.

Food is Medicine (FIM) initiatives offer a promising strategy to prevent and manage diet-related chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes. These approaches connect people to nutritious foods that support the management of diet-related conditions. For state health departments working to increase enrollment and retention in the National Diabetes Prevention Program (National DPP) lifestyle change program, FIM initiatives can be a powerful and cost-effective complement to improve participant engagement and health outcomes.

Food insecurity affects over 47 million Americans and pervades every social work practice setting, from pediatric clinics to child welfare offices. Functioning as a critical social determinant of health, food insecurity compounds chronic disease, depression, and economic instability. Despite its pervasiveness, most social work curricula inadequately address food access, requiring practitioners to build expertise independently. This comprehensive guide equips social workers with validated screening tools, intervention models with proven outcomes, and policy advocacy strategies to address this systemic issue. The guide reframes food insecurity as a predictable consequence of structural inequity rather than individual failure. By emphasizing accurate screening, evidence-based program connections, and systemic policy change, social workers occupy a central role in shifting toward solutions that address the root causes of food access disparities.

The administration works to integrate substance use disorder and mental health with physical health care, to promote successful treatments, and to serve people ...

Optum, UnitedHealth Group's behavioral health division, implemented a documented cost-reduction strategy targeting applied behavior analysis therapy for autistic children enrolled in Medicaid plans. Internal documents revealed by ProPublica disclosed deliberate efforts to limit ABA access through network restrictions, provider terminations, and market-specific action plans that could eliminate up to 40% of in-network providers in certain states. Optum contested these findings, citing significant network expansion. The strategy reflects Medicaid managed care economics, where insurers receive fixed monthly capitation fees regardless of service utilization, creating financial incentives to reduce expensive treatments like intensive ABA therapy.

Digital health technologies have expanded rapidly through telemedicine, wearables, and AI, yet significant inequities persist for rural, elderly, and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations vulnerable to infrastructure disruptions. Current approaches prioritize technological innovation over trust, adaptation, and health literacy. This perspective advocates for symbiotic health ecosystems where clinicians, patients, caregivers, communities, and AI systems collaborate rather than deploying isolated AI tools. The authors propose that calibrated human-AI collaboration, supported by resilient, locally adaptive infrastructures including telemedicine, remote monitoring, backup energy systems, and community-supported models, can strengthen healthcare delivery in underserved and disrupted contexts. This framework emphasizes trustworthy, contextually appropriate solutions applicable beyond Nordic examples to diverse underserved populations globally.

A new study published in JAMA Network Open introduces the Digital Health Index, the first comprehensive national measure assessing community readiness for digital health services. Analyzing over 85,000 census tracts across all fifty states, researchers found that approximately 100 million Americans lack adequate healthcare access, particularly in rural and underserved areas. The AI-powered DHI combines socioeconomic conditions, healthcare access, and digital connectivity to identify digital health vulnerabilities. Notably, more than half of communities flagged as digitally vulnerable were not detected by existing social vulnerability or broadband access measures, revealing significant blind spots in current planning tools. This innovative assessment enables healthcare organizations to strategically allocate resources for digital literacy support, device assistance, and broadband investments in communities most needing digital health infrastructure development.

Second Chance Community Health's integrated care model addresses the whole person by connecting three essential pathways: medical care, behavioral health support, and housing assistance. Rather than treating these components separately, the organization recognizes that sustainable wellness requires simultaneous intervention across all domains. Through the example of Maria, a 34-year-old experiencing homelessness and multiple health challenges, the model demonstrates its effectiveness. Initial crisis intervention connects patients to comprehensive services including same-day clinical intake, affordable medication management, trauma-informed therapy, and emergency housing placement. Ongoing case management supports benefit enrollment, employment assistance, and permanent housing transitions. By coordinating medical treatment, mental health counseling, and stable shelter within one integrated framework, Second Chance transforms acute crisis episodes into pathways toward lasting stability and improved health outcomes.

millions of students experience basic needs insecurity, including a lack of access to adequate housing, food, social determinant of health

In this context, the promise of parity—ensuring coverage of MH/SUD care is equal to coverage offered for medical/surgical care—could not matter more. Under the ...

CMS is requesting information on how to best improve hospital price transparency data standardization -- specifically data consistency, comparability and ...

Cancer vaccines offer a promising strategy to initiate de novo T cell responses or enhance existing ones, either functioning independently or synergizing with T cell–modulating therapeutics to reduce tumor burden. The clinical development of cancer vaccines faces challenges such as limited antigen coverage, insufficient antigen presentation, immune suppressive microenvironment, and the availability of personalized vaccines. In this study, we developed a universal “all-in-one” cancer cell–derived vaccine (UniCVac) with comprehensive antigen spectrum coverage by programming tumor cells into antigen-presenting cells (APCs) through the codelivery of CIITA, NLRC5, CD80, and IL-2. This reprogramming mimics the professional APC phenotype, providing simultaneous HLA-I and HLA-II antigen presentation, costimulation, and T cell proliferation signals. These tumor-derived UniCVac can directly activate both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in vitro, independent of APCs. In addition, their costimulation and T cell growth-stimulating capabilities result in superior CD4+ and CD8+ T cell activation and proliferation comparable to traditional APCs, with enhanced PI3K-AKT pathways activation.

Injectable hydrogels demonstrated the capacity to provide spatially localized and temporally controlled therapy within the infarcted myocardium. Stimuli-responsive systems exploiting pH, reactive oxygen species, and enzymatic microenvironments enabled phase-matched therapeutic release. Major pharmacological effects included macrophage immunomodulation, angiogenesis promotion, oxidative stress reduction, fibrosis attenuation, and restoration of electrical conductivity. Convergent signaling pathways across studies included PI3K/AKT, AMPK-mTOR, VEGF, and TGF-β-related networks. Preclinical studies consistently reported improvements in ventricular remodeling and cardiac function, while early clinical translation with VentriGel established feasibility and procedural safety in human patients. Injectable bioactive hydrogels represent a promising pharmacological strategy for post-MI cardiac repair by integrating biomaterial engineering with localized multi-dimensional drug delivery.

Nitric oxide (NO) is a key signaling molecule involved in many physiological processes including vasodilation, neurotransmission, inflammatory and antimicrobial responses. Despite its therapeutic potential, its clinical utility remains limited due to its extremely short half-life (less than 5 s), high reactivity (with oxygen radicals) and the need for precise spatiotemporal dose control. To overcome these limitations, recent advancements in biomaterials have led to the development of responsive systems capable of delivering NO in a targeted and controlled manner. These systems can respond to endogenous stimuli (such as pH changes, enzymatic activity, altered redox environment (associated with hypoxia, oxidative stress) which are key characteristics of diseased cells) or to exogenous stimuli (such as light, X-ray, ultrasound). By allowing site-specific and time-controlled NO release, these responsive biomaterials offer improved control over local NO delivery and are being evaluated predominantly in in vitro and animal models. In this review, we discuss the advances in design of NO-releasing responsive biomaterials with a particular focus on applications in antimicrobial skin therapy.

Menopause represents a significant yet overlooked cost driver for health plans managing high-risk populations with multiple chronic conditions. The hormonal changes associated with menopause can complicate existing conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and depression, intensifying clinical complexity and healthcare expenditures. Despite affecting over 80% of women inadequately, menopause often remains unmanaged within high-cost populations. Physiologic shifts influence cardiovascular risk, metabolic function, bone density, sleep, and mental health, potentially disrupting treatment stability. Medication management emerges as a critical concern, as women juggling hormone therapy with multiple chronic disease treatments risk drug interactions and adherence failures. Addressing menopause as an integrated component of chronic disease management represents an opportunity for health plans to reduce costs and improve outcomes in aging female populations.

As a new generation of biomaterials, biodegradable zinc (Zn)-based implants hold substantial promise for clinical use due to their favorable biocompatibility and controllable degradation behavior. This review summarizes recent progress in Zn-based implants, focusing on the physiological roles of Zn, current Zn-based implant systems, and relevant applicable standards. To address the critical challenges faced in practical applications, such as optimizing corrosion rate, antibacterial performance, and biocompatibility, researchers have employed innovative strategies, including alloying (e.g., Zn-Mg, Zn-Mn, Zn-Li), surface modifications, and functional coatings. Meanwhile, a detailed overview is provided of in vitro and in vivo degradation evaluation systems, advances in preclinical animal studies, and the status of clinical trials, together with regulatory requirements for biodegradable metals set by domestic and international authorities. Key mechanistic and translational bottlenecks that currently limit clinical adoption are identified, together with critical directions for the rational design and standardized evaluation of next-generation Zn-based implants.