Nestlé to remove 10% of sugar from all snacks in UK and Ireland by 2018

Nestlé, one of the world’s biggest chocolate manufacturers, will take 10% of the sugar out of its confectionery in the UK and Ireland by 2018.

The corporation says the cut is from the levels existing in its sugary products in 2015 and will amount to about 7,500 tonnes. It makes several well-known brands, including Aero, Dairy Box, Drifter, KitKat, Lion, Milkybar, Munchies, Polo, Quality Street, Rolo, Smarties, Toffee Crisp, Walnut Whip and Yorkie.

The announcement follows public concern over the quantity of sugar in the country’s diet and its contribution to rising obesity levels. The threat of a sugar levy on soft drinks has encouraged the reformulation of Irn Bru and Lucozade, which will escape the tax, although there have been no such moves by PepsiCo or Coca-Cola. There is no proposed tax on sugar in food, but the government has hinted it might come if the country’s sugar intake is not reduced.

Nestlé says it will not use artificial sweeteners in its confectionery. Instead it plans to replace sugar with higher quantities of existing ingredients or other, non-artificial ingredients and ensuring products are below a certain amount of calories.

Reduced sizes are likely to be one of the options, and it is possible that a certain amount of sugar can be taken out without affecting the taste much.

“The 10% reduction is not a case of a straight swap of sugar for another ingredient – it will be achieved in a number of different ways so that we can make sure that the taste is as good or better from product to product,” a spokesperson said.

“We are not announcing specific changes to brands at this stage but over the coming months and years we will introduce revised products that make incremental reductions on sugar in different ways that, when added up, make a big difference overall to the nation’s diet while still maintaining taste.”

In November, Nestlé announced it had made a key breakthrough in food science that would allow it to reduce sugar by up to 40%. It claimed its scientists had found a way to “structure sugar differently”.

In the latest announcement, Fiona Kendrick chair and chief executive of Nestlé UK and Ireland, suggested this technological shift would be part of the answer.

“These innovations will help us to reduce sugar in confectionery when they are combined with other, more common methods like reformulating recipes and swapping sugar for other non-artificial ingredients,” she said.

Public Health England, which is charged with encouraging companies to reformulate their products, welcomed the announcement.

“Nestlé is the latest household name to commit to making everyday products healthier and we’re delighted this is just the start of its efforts,” said Duncan Selbie, PHE’s chief executive.

“This sends a clear message that reducing sugar in food is possible, even in products that are typically harder to reformulate.”

Nestlé to remove 10% of sugar from all snacks in UK and Ireland by 2018

White Home Strategies To Shift Medicare Away From Fee-For-Support 50% Of Payments Tied To Good quality By 2018

The Obama administration will push Medicare payment swiftly away from charge-for-services medicine within four years, outlining a program to have half of all Medicare bucks paid by to doctors and hospitals by means of “alternative” reimbursement models by the finish of 2018.

U.S. Secretary of Well being and Human Solutions Sylvia M. Burwell today said reforming Medicare payment is a priority now that millions far more Americans have overall health coverage beneath the Affordable Care Act and her company as a result will concentrate “energies” on making use of “incentives to inspire increased-value care.” A detailed seem is here.

“A vast majority of Medicare charge-for-service payments currently have a link to good quality or worth,” Burwell stated in a standpoint piece published in the Jan. 26 New England Journal of Medicine. “Our purpose is to have 85% of all Medicare charge-for-service payments tied to top quality or worth by 2016, and 90% by 2018. Probably even far more crucial, our target is to have 30% of Medicare payments tied to high quality or worth by way of alternative payment designs by the end of 2016, and 50% of payments by the finish of 2018.”

Currently, just twenty percent of payments from the Medicare well being insurance system for the elderly are paid through option payment versions like bundled payments, patient-centered health-related houses and accountable care organizations, a swiftly emerging care delivery program that rewards physicians and hospitals for operating collectively to improve top quality and rein in expenses. In these designs, medical doctors and hospitals get on more risk that they can streamline the care, improve quality and remove bureaucratic inefficiencies.

“Three many years in the past, Medicare produced virtually no payments by means of these alternative payment versions,” Burwell stated.

Just last week, UnitedHealth Group UnitedHealth Group (UNH) reiterated its commitment to enhance payments that are tied to value-based mostly arrangements to $ 65 billion by the finish of 2018.  Aetna Aetna (AET), Cigna Cigna (CI), Humana Humana (HUM) and other individuals are expected to supply updates on their worth-based mostly contracting for this yr inside the subsequent two weeks.

Asking yourself how the move away from charge-for-support medicine  will affect your overall health care? The Forbes eBook Within Obamacare: The Resolve For America’s Ailing Well being Care Technique answers that query and much more. Accessible nowat Amazon and Apple.

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White Home Strategies To Shift Medicare Away From Fee-For-Support 50% Of Payments Tied To Good quality By 2018

Remote-managed contraceptive microchip could launch by 2018

Fighting above the remote manage could soon end up in much more than just a channel-hopping battle, if researchers at MIT have their way. In the Bill Gates-funded quest for the up coming form of contraception, a Massachusetts startup has come up with a small remote-controlled chip, like a digital wifi edition of the pill, that will allow females to switch their fertility on and off at the touch of a button.

The chip is implanted underneath the skin and releases modest doses of the contraceptive hormone levonorgestrel on a everyday basis, with ample capability to final 16 years. About the identical dimension as a Scrabble tile, it houses a series of micro-reservoirs covered by an ultra-thin titanium and platinum seal. The hormone is launched by passing a modest electric present from an internal battery by way of the seal, which melts it temporarily, enabling a thirty microgram dose of levonorgestrel to seep out every single day. And it can be basically switched off by a wireless remote, staying away from the clinical procedures essential to deactivate other contraceptive implants.

“The capacity to flip the device on and off gives a specific ease issue for individuals who are planning their loved ones,” says MIT’s Dr Robert Farra, incorporating that “the idea of making use of a thin membrane like an electrical fuse was the most difficult and the most inventive issue we had to remedy.”

Remote birth manage … How the micro-dispensing chip works. Photograph: Microchips

But just as teenage pranksters can hack into wifi remotes to operate neighbours’ garage doors and flip their Tv channels, could a remote-controlled contraceptive open the floodgates for a new kind of ovarian hacking? May possibly Anonymous a single day flip their hand to subversive family members organizing?

“Someone across the room can not reprogramme your implant,” says Farra. “Communication with the implant has to happen at skin get in touch with-degree distance. Then we have secure encryption. That prevents someone from making an attempt to interpret or intervene in between the communications.”

The idea for micro-dispensing chips was initial produced in the 1990s by Professor Robert Langer at MIT, the founder of innumerable biotech firms and holder of far more than 800 patents, recognized in the market as “the most cited engineer in history”. His lab caught the attention of Bill Gates in 2012, in the course of his search for a revolution in birth control (which has already spawned programs for a graphene condom), and Langer subsequently leased the engineering to Microchips, a organization currently operating on a micro-dosing implant for osteoporosis.

Two years on, Microchips says that the implant could be accessible by 2018, if clinical trials launching up coming yr in the US are effective, and that the gadget will be “competitively priced”. Customers will have the choice of possessing the chip implanted in the abdomen, upper arm or buttocks – in which case just be cautious not to sit on the remote.

Remote-managed contraceptive microchip could launch by 2018

Will the NHS be paperless by 2018? Discussion roundup

The rewards

Prof Jonathan Kay, clinical informatics director, NHS England: The phrase “paperless” operates in describing a vision, but when you get to the details of what has to be carried out, it’s better to believe of patient safety and procedure efficiency, which are the two benefits that computerisation can deliver to clinical practice.

Prof John Williams, director of the wellness informatics unit, Royal College of Doctors: To make records obtainable instantly, wherever the patient is witnessed to make clinical processes a lot more effective, specifically communications to allow patients to accessibility their record to allow structured, coded clinical noting, to yield aggregate data for several functions to enable successful integration of information held in distinct programs and spots to enable hyperlinks to other info that will help clinical selections.

Natalie Bateman, head of well being and social care, techUK: The engineering is accessible and the paperless agenda need to be a priority. Even so it’s critical not to overlook the purpose why we’re carrying out it. It is not simply about automating tasks, but about making safer and more effective well being and social care solutions, based on digital platforms that permit for the transformation of the health and social care sector, for the benefit of the healthcare pros and patients.

Helen Glenister, chief working officer, the Studying Clinic: Visibility of just in time information, eg important indications data, for a patient wherever members of a healthcare group are functioning in a hospital. Paper charts are only accessible the place they are located – usually in one particular area. More accessibility with proper controls prospects to far more informed and quicker determination generating. Technologies can help the healthcare specialist to provide the correct care to the correct patient at the appropriate time by prompting and warning when assessments and checks want to be carried out and alerting if early warning scores present indications of deterioration.

Will it occur?

Dr Andrew Whiteley, GP and managing director of Lexacom Digital Dictation: The achievement or otherwise of such an undertaking will rely on the capability of the consumer to be ready access the data they want, when they need it and a lot more simply than they at the moment can do. A typical failing of NHS IT tasks is that they often overlook that IT solutions are meant to save the users time enhance their scenario, not the opposite.

Mike Morris, product sales and business director, Tiani Spirit: the digitising of existing paper records would provide a more affordable signifies of archiving information, but the info on scanned paper is seldom of great use as it is not electronically searchable. Furthermore it would be quite crucial to link with each other all the numerous components of a patient’s record held in various organisations so that clinicians can get a clear, holistic see of the patient prior to making diagnosis.

The challenges

Jon Atkin, enterprise growth manager, Fortrus: It is critical that the IT method is developed around the consumer, and not the consumer having to discover complex systems. The procedure of consumer encounter design addresses this require.

Tony Yeaman, head of healthcare, Weightmans LLP: Clearly in implementing a paperless NHS, regard need to be had to:

• Data safety [Data Protection Act 1998] and other related legislative requirements need to be understood and complied with
• Existing contractual arrangements with other organisations , which includes commissioners, companies, the personal sector and IT companies need careful assessment
• Procurement problems and clarity of contracting is really critical
• Confidentiality and consent issues, including patient consent, data privacy, authorised entry
• Availability of data in a legal context several many years into the long term for litigation
• Clear contractual and indemnity provisions with suppliers and maintainers of programs

Glenister: 1 of the barriers to the paperless NHS is clinicians failing to adopt technology. Adoption will be a challenge if technology is observed as an added activity – eg creating info on paper then obtaining to enter it to a Pc. Technological innovation demands to be created so that it is component of the process of care and available at the bedside.

Yeaman: I agree and consider there are important troubles all around training and education of all these concerned in the method to make sure they understand the advantages and how it can assist them and help the patient. This will require commitment across the entire organisation from board down. Whatever is place in place have to be clear, as user friendly as possible and nicely understood, otherwise it will not be utilized

Bateman: I would argue that there is also a require to educate and raise awareness of the genuine rewards of technological innovation adoption. It really is crucial for these concerned in delivering/implementing the digital agenda to show the tangible rewards, and improved care that it can provide, not just to a particular organisation but the NHS as a complete. And the only way healthcare experts can do this is by believing in it – they as well require to see and understand the value-add that tech can carry the health and social care.

Williams: In the care of the person patient, specifically in which there are multiple problems looked soon after in many various settings, we have to plainly mix the use of new communications media with more formal structured noting, and locate a way to successfully and safely to integrate the two.

The future

Bateman: There’s a require for a culture alter inside the NHS. It reminds me of the quote from Henry Ford: “If I had asked men and women what they wanted, they would have said more rapidly horses.” The only way we can encourage behaviour adjust is by winning the hearts and minds of the men and women that are vital to the implementation and good results of digitisation. And to win their self confidence they need to see the actual positive aspects of investment versus the standing quo.

Glenister: We want to recognise that paper, even though a tough act to follow, is not ideal. Sometimes, it can not be read through, there are options for error and it does not give the visibility of what is going on in a hospital, a weakness recognized by [Robert] Francis. Engineering is used in other industries to provide just in time information for delivering quality and effective services – this is a need to for the NHS.

Yeaman: As a new generation of healthcare professionals and managers come into the services who have grown up in the data age and with their use and dependence on social media, electronic mail and the web, we will see more and a lot more selection makers and shapers with the abilities to lead and be advocates for what can be achieved with this technologies across the total NHS from board down and from clinicians up.

Atkin: Human nature tends to favour the way things have constantly been completed, because it is familiar. Individuals are cozy with paper data, but if finish customers could see the amount of paper data that are lost, misfiled and forgotten, and also the extraordinary value of running health care data libraries, the danger/reward argument leans heavily in the direction of digitisation.

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Will the NHS be paperless by 2018? Discussion roundup