The complex field of health-care information may soon be a little more streamlined. On Tuesday, Chicago-based electronic medical records provider Allscripts announced it has agreed to merge with British rival Misys PLC in a cash-and-stocks deal worth more than $1 billion. The new firm, which will operate under the name Allscripts, will become one of the largest players in the U.S.'s $20 billion electronic health-record industry. In its present form, Allscripts manages data for more than 40,000 ...

As Europe confronts another act in its Greek drama, many are watching and wondering, Is the U.S. next? Could our debt-ceiling debate be the beginning of a crisis that makes the world lose faith in American credit? Anything could happen, but it's worth noting the big differences between Greece and the U.S. Greece faces three problems. First, it has an uncompetitive economy that cannot generate growth. Its labor is too expensive, it exports few products, and its ...

Amnesty International may be best known to American audiences for bringing to light horror stories abroad such as the disappearance of political activists in Argentina or the abysmal conditions inside South African prisons under apartheid. But in a new report on pregnancy and childbirth care in the U.S., Amnesty details the maternal-health care crisis in this country as part of a systemic violation of women's rights. The report, titled "Deadly Delivery," notes that the likelihood of a woman's dying in childbirth in the ...

As a gubernatorial candidate last summer, Georgia Republican Nathan Deal boasted of having backed measures to bar undocumented immigrants from federal health care, and public colleges. He supported a bill that, starting July 1, will become one of America's most punitive state immigration laws. And now he has released a report indicating that Georgia's largest industry, agriculture, suddenly has 11,000 openings — which, he suggested, should be filled with some of the state's 100,000 ex-convicts, about ...

Will nanomachines one day be launched into our bloodstreams to monitor health and combat disease? Or will "self-replicating nanobots" proliferate out of control until they completely overrun the planet? A runaway plague of rogue nanobots wouldn't violate basic scientific laws, but that doesn't make it realistic. This extreme outcome is not likely, but it's not impossible either — and that's exactly what critics of the technology are worried about. It is foolhardy to venture predictions about what science will achieve this ...

AIDS was the last thing Gui Xien expected to find in the remote peasant villages of China's Henan province. But when he visited there in 1999, as a favor to a fellow doctor whose patients were dying from a mysterious disease, it didn't take Gui long to make a diagnosis. The stories were all the same: first the husband would fall ill, then his wife, and after a few months, both would be dead, covered in sores and dark, wine-colored ...

The largest empty space on the shelves of health-food stores these days is probably where the Crunchy Granola is stocked. What is Crunchy Granola? It is a dry cereal about the texture of uncooked oatmeal that consists of rolled oats, wheat germ, sesame seeds, unsweetened coconut, soy oil, sea salt and brown sugar, give or take a few things. Because of all that natural goodness, plus a not unpleasant sweetish taste, it is the rage right now with a generation ...

High infant mortality, low life expectancy, soaring health-care costs — the symptoms are numerous and the diagnosis unmistakable: America's health-care system is ailing. But like a patient who coughs or limps his way through an illness, the U.S. has often been reluctant to look for help. That's changing. The Obama Administration promises to offer universal coverage, introduce electronic records and wrestle health-care costs under control — in short, at least part of the health-care revolution that many Americans have advocated for ...

On May 25, U.S. businessman Charles Hubbs made the short trek to Hong Kong from his office just outside Guangzhou, a city in Guangdong province in southeastern China that is known for good reason as the manufacturing workshop of the world. For the 64-year-old native of Louisiana, it was a trip that may have marked the beginning of the end of his successful 22-year run as a China-based exporter of medical supplies. Hubbs was going to listen to a pitch ...

What makes us the way we are? Why are some people predisposed to be anxious, overweight or asthmatic? How is it that some of us are prone to heart attacks, diabetes or high blood pressure? There's a list of conventional answers to these questions. We are the way we are because it's in our genes: the DNA we inherited at conception. We turn out the way we do because of our childhood experiences: how we were treated and what we ...