The airline industry provides a gloomy metaphor for health care, according to Brandeis University economist Stuart Altman, who spoke at a W. P. Carey School of Business symposium recently.

Only a handful of the nation's medical schools now teach molecular science, but soon doctors without this education will be on the road to obsolescence. Scientists are looking deep into the genetic code to find an answer in the molecules to the riddles of disease diagnoses and treatment.

Using health information dating from the Civil War, researchers have arrived at some intriguing conclusions about the "environmentally induced change to human physiology" which has led to a steady increase of healthier longer-lived people in developed nations.

The solution to the increasingly expensive U.S. health-care system is to abandon insurance plans and government programs — and throw the beast into the open marketplace, according to 2004 Nobel Laureate Edward C. Prescott, professor of economics at the W. P. Carey School of Business.

The availability of health data has implications for individual patients, health-care systems and policymakers, yet despite advances in information management, patient health records to a large extent are still scattered and difficult to retrieve.

How efficiently hospitals keep track of health-care supplies can make the difference not only in cost but also the quality of patient care.

The health-care industry is beginning to adopt the principles of sustainable procurement — a "green" approach to purchasing which takes into account the efficient use of nonrenewable resources and the potential for recycling.

Since 1980, the proportion of overweight U.S. children ages 6 to 11 has more than doubled, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Childhood obesity doesn't stop at our nation's borders; it's a global trend.

When Thomas Donohue scans the American health-care landscape, he sees an opportunity.

Arizona's health information technology (HIT) industry and health-care delivery system are on the brink of radical transformation as Arizona Health-e Connection prepares to publish its proposal offering a "road map" for development and implementation of a statewide, unified HIT network.