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Drugmakers have made great strides coming up with new treatments for diabetes as the disease gallops across the globe.  However, healthcare professionals are concerned that hormone insulin meds, often the key treatment, are getting too costly for many patients, even in the U.S. In developing countries, they say engineered insulin is automatically out of reach of many people while supplies of older, but cheaper, human insulin are becoming scarce.

A bipartisan duo in the U.S. Senate introduced a bill in March that aims to streamline the way the FDA reviews medical devices.

Mobile health app developers have struggled to figure out whether their technology will pass muster with regulators.  Now, feds want to take out some of the guesswork.  The FTC and FDA are rolling out a new web-based tool for companies making mobile health apps that helps them understand which laws and regulations apply to their products, especially regarding security.

Scientists have found that children hospitalized in intensive care units are more likely to develop attention deficit disorders further down the road, and now, they’ve uncovered a link.  Researchers in Belgium saw that plastic-softening chemicals in medical devices can lead to neurocognitive issues in kids.

Researchers may have discovered a method of detecting changes in the eye that could identify Parkinson’s disease before its symptoms develop.  Scientists at University College London (UCL) say their early animal tests could lead to a cheap and non-invasive way to spot the disease.

Researchers at South Korea’s Institute for Basic Science are developing a drug-delivering glucose monitoring microneedle patch made of gold-doped graphene.  It showed promise on diabetic mice, according to a just-published paper in Nature Nanotechnology.

Scientists have focused on developing new tech to address brain injuries in football players, but now, a group of researchers is thinking bigger picture.  Researchers at Harvard University are launching a smartphone app through Apple’s ResearchKit that takes a broad look at players’ health after they leave the field.

In the last few years, researchers have gotten very good at mass-producing pancreatic beta cells that produce sufficient insulin to offer improvement for diabetic patients.  However now, they are focused on inventing and testing the means to use these beta cells in a way that effectively introduces insulin into the system–while simultaneously protecting the cells from a patient’s immune system.

By taking his inspiration from nature, including the Elephant Nose Fish, insects and arthropods, the University of Wisconsin’s Hongrui Jiang is making progress on a “smart” contact lens that can automatically refocus, to the benefit of those with presbyopia, or the stiffening of the eye, which causes difficulties focusing on nearby objects.

Senators pulled an all-nighter over a weekend in March and made unexpected progress on medical device regulatory reform that “will help ensure more timely patient access to the latest medical innovations and improve the efficiency of FDA’s device review process,” according to AdvaMed.