In Global News: Your Phone Hears Your COPD, 15 Transplants For 15 Years, and New Skin

Patient Care
To commemorate its 15th anniversary, the Asian Heart Institute in Mumbai, India, has pledged to subsidize the costs of 15 heart transplants for patients who cannot afford them.
Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi in UAE have noted a relatively high number of patients treated for achalasia with peroral endoscopic myotomy.
 
Drugs and Devices
Abbott’s MitraClip is the first transcatheter treatment for mitral regurgitation to be approved by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.
An app developed by a startup in Haifa, Israel, can monitor a COPD patient’s phone calls and alert them to changes in their voice that might be associated with worsening lung function.
 
Research, Trials, and Funding
Neovasc has received US Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a North America clinical trial of its Reducer, a catheter-based technology for refractory angina that is already approved in Europe.
An editorial from Nature discusses the road of translational research that lead to the genetically-modified skin transplant that now allows a young boy to play outside without blistered skin.