Stories you may have missed last week:
A chip designed by Texas Instruments and MIT is said to run on 0.3 V instead of the 1 V of current chips. The chip could extend battery life in medical implants.

Since 2000, the expansion of western pharmaceutical companies around the world and the emergence of local rivals in developing countries have meant that the number of clinical trials taking place in the emerging economies of China, India, eastern Europe and Latin America is growing. Is this good or bad? The Financial times discuses the ethics of offshoring clinical trials.

Researcher Mitchell Feldman University of California at San Francisco is worried that fewer than 100 devices a year undergo the same scrutiny as a new drug. If a new device does what an old one did, approval is generally automatic. Should devices get the same scrutiny as drugs?

AdvaMed issued a statement praising the President's proposal to raise spending on the FDA, but think it falls short when it comes to competitive bidding for diagnostic tests and "payments to providers in both inpatient and ambulatory settings."