U.S. emergency departments see 96% fewer visits, $7.6 million less in medical costs after FDA approval of over the counter emergency contraception.

A collaborative partnership dedicated to improving statewide cardiovascular care and outcomes — hosted at Michigan Medicine — received national recognition for efforts in patient safety and quality. BMC2 received the award for its significant improvements in the documentation of radiation use, a decrease in high-dose radiation exposure and reduction in opioid prescribing rates for patients.

In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, wow, that's a mouthful, more commonly known as the HITECH Act, spent billions to promote the uptake of electronic health records by US hospitals. Fast forward more than a decade later, and now approximately four out of five healthcare institutions have electronic health record systems in place that integrate clinical notes, test results, medications, diagnostic images, et cetera. The adoption of EHR systems into healthcare introduces new and exciting opportunities to extract information that can be used to augment other types of data for research. As you might imagine though, it can be tricky to pull out meaningful information from the text of clinical notes. In this episode, we'll speak with a University of Michigan researcher, Dr. Vinod Vydiswaran, who's been developing methods to identify dementia from EHR data.

A large study shows having bipolar disorder is associated with a four- to six-fold risk of dying prematurely, suggesting more preventive efforts needed. Visit Health Lab to read the full story.

Urinary tract infections are a pain. A doctor explains how to banish them for good. Visit Health Lab to read the full story.

The population of older adults living with dementia is expected to swell to nearly 14 million by 2050 and is estimated to cost the US economy more than 500 billion each year. In the absence of a cure for Alzheimer's disease, the primary cause of dementia, there's interest in understanding modifiable risk factors. In theory, getting a handle on the modifiable risk factors for dementia, would enable public health efforts to reduce cognitive decline in dementia at the population level. We've come a long way in understanding the risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and other related dementias. However, there's still work to be done. In this episode, we'll speak with Dr. Josh Ehrlich, a researcher at the University of Michigan, who has examined vision impairment as a risk factor for dementia.