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 ...

A baboon-heart transplant inspires both awe and anger Except for the gauze-covered wound stretching almost the length of her torso, the tiny, dark-haired baby girl might have been just any infant. Lying in her crib with a pacifier close at hand, she gave a couple of gaping yawns. She delicately stretched her scrawny arms in weariness. And mostly she slept. But last week, as television viewers got their first glimpse of the newborn known only as Baby Fae, it was ...

As a rule, it's not a good idea to pick up a gun, take over the emergency room of a hospital and threaten to kill your family's cardiac surgeon. But that's what Denzel Washington's character does in the film John Q. when his son is denied the heart transplant he needs to survive. And if box-office reaction is any indication, plenty of frustrated health-care consumers have at least fantasized about doing the same thing: John Q., released in late February, ...

No one likes to walk into work after just a few fitful hours of sleep. But now there's evidence that not getting enough sleep may have more serious consequences than dark circles under your eyes the next morning. Researchers at the University of Chicago report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that too little sleep can promote calcium buildup in the heart arteries, leading to the plaques that can then break apart and cause ...

Spring is coming, and a young man's thoughts turn to ... you know. Apparently, old men's thoughts turn to the same subject. According to an article to be published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal, 67% of men ages 65 to 74 said they had been sexually active in the past year, compared with just 40% of women in that age group. Everyone knows young men think constantly about sex, but many guys remain interested in sex ...

At the American Medical Association's annual meeting in Chicago last week, when the doctors got around to discussing medicine instead of medicare, topic A was the danger of smoking. Physicians already familiar with tobacco's implication in the growing incidence of lung cancer were startled to hear that they had been worrying about one of the least of tobacco-caused troubles. Lung cancer brought on by cigarette smoking, reported the American Cancer Society's chief research statistician. Dr. Edward Cuyler Hammond, is "relatively ...

The new arrivals at the drug rehab center in Chichevo, a tiny village two hours' drive east of Moscow, are usually given two weeks without chores to recover from the nausea, pain and sleeplessness of withdrawal. After that, between Bible study and prayer they have to start chopping firewood, hauling water from the village well or otherwise helping around the old wooden house. But a lot more leeway was allowed in the case of Irina Pavlova, ...

T.J. Rodgers may be many things--tough taskmaster, Green Bay Packers fan--but reticent he is not. And if anything gets the pugnacious founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor talking, it's the notion that corporations ought to exist for more than the pursuit of profit. In the simplest terms, that idea--called corporate social responsibility, or CSR--invites companies to consider their impact on people and the planet on a par with their traditional quest for profit. Rodgers considers that bunk. Not that he ...

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 ...

Postpartum depression is a familiar rite of new parenthood. Feelings of emptiness, sadness and anxiety settle in after the birth of a child, and in severe cases last for months. It turns out that this common condition, once considered the province of the mother, may affect many new fathers too. Researchers at Eastern Virginia Medical School, publishing an analysis of 43 past studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday, report that up to 10% ...