Scientists have long thought that social networks featuring many distant connections, or long ties - where individuals know a lot of people, but not well - produce large-scale changes most quickly.

UnitedHealth Group will invest $10m to help California’s Critical Access Hospitals improve their health information technology (IT) systems and adopt electronic health records.

Graymark Healthcare has signed a definitive agreement under which Walgreen will acquire substantially all of the assets of ApothecaryRx, the independent pharmacy division of Graymark.

Biopharmaceutical company iBio and its development collaborator Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology (CMB) have entered into an agreement with GE Healthcare. Financial terms are not being disclosed.

Varian Medical Systems has established its first education center in India to train medical physicists and technologists working on the company's advanced cancer treatment systems.

McKesson Pharmacy Systems, a software division of McKesson Corporation, has launched EnterpriseRx Reports Director, which is to designed to improve business intelligence and performance monitoring across all pharmacies.

Sanomedics International Holdings (SIMH), a manufacturer of healthcare diagnostic products, has named Gary O'Hara as its new chief technology officer.

Medical technology company Medtronic has received Health Canada approval for the Medtronic Ablation Frontiers Cardiac Ablation System, a novel radiofrequency (RF) ablation technology for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF).

Healthcare solutions provider Novartis and Nestle have completed the purchase and sale of approximately 156 million shares of eye care company Alcon for $28.3 billion in cash.

SensiVida Medical Technologies has signed a contract with MDC Associates to conduct clinical studies and prepare the 510k submission for SensiVida's allergy test system.