JW Pharmaceutical said Tuesday it will produce and distribute an educational comic book for women with hemophilia and carriers ahead of World Hemophilia Day on April 17.
Titled “It’s OK to Be a Little Different, Because We’re Together,” the comic is part of the company’s annual hemophilia support program, the Bravo Campaign. The company said it aims to improve public understanding of women with hemophilia and carriers, and to help families explain the condition to children.
The story follows “Bomin,” a fourth-grade girl with a younger brother who has hemophilia, as she learns she is a carrier and comes to understand the disorder. The book introduces symptoms women patients or carriers may experience, including heavy menstrual bleeding, bruising under the skin and nosebleeds, and outlines precautions for higher-risk situations such as surgery and childbirth. It also stresses early diagnosis, including clotting factor activity tests and genetic testing.
South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety on Tuesday issued guidance on safe use and precautions for injectable treatments for atopic dermatitis, citing an increase in skin problems in spring due to pollen, fine dust and wider day-to-night temperature swings.
The agency said basic care includes using a moisturizer at least twice a day regardless of symptom severity. Treatments include topical steroids, oral antihistamines and immunomodulators, and wet-wrap therapy and antibiotics may be used together during acute flare-ups.
For severe cases that are difficult to control with existing treatment, self-injectable biopharmaceuticals are used. The agency said these drugs suppress substances that trigger inflammation, improving itching and skin symptoms.
Patients should use self-injectors only after receiving sufficient training from medical staff and should follow storage and disposal instructions. Single-use injectors must not be reused, and used syringes and needles should be sealed in a disposal container before being discarded.
The agency said patients should consult medical staff if a parasitic infection is suspected before or during treatment. It also advised avoiding live vaccines — including measles, mumps and rubella, rotavirus and shingles — while using the injections, and said inactivated vaccines should be discussed with medical staff before vaccination.
Hecto Group said Tuesday it is boosting competitiveness in organizational culture by improving benefits around employee experience through what it calls “evolving welfare.”
The company said it is building a participation-based culture and pursuing benefits that continue to develop rather than a fixed model, an approach reflected in its cafeteria, “Chaeum.”
Chaeum provides free breakfast, lunch and dinner and is operated with employees’ condition and work efficiency in mind. Breakfast features simple options and balanced meals, while lunch offers a choice through A and B stations.
Hecto Group said it recently revamped menus and services based on employee feedback, adding a summer-focused salad menu and setting up a self-serve hot pot station at dinner so employees can cook a range of items themselves.
Cha Bio F&C, an affiliate of Cha Bio Group, said Tuesday its pet supplement brand PetSeven has launched “PetSeven Gut Care Probiotics,” a new product aimed at supporting dogs’ intestinal health.
The company said the supplement was designed with dogs’ gut and pancreatic health and immune balance in mind. It contains selected probiotics with a guaranteed count of 5 billion CFU per stick, and applies a special coating technology intended to improve survival and colonization in the gut. It also combines prebiotics and probiotics.
Key ingredients include a seven-strain probiotic blend from Lallemand’s Rosell, chicory extract as a prebiotic, postbiotic ingredients including Epicor Pet and yeast, and a plant-based enzyme blend, DigeZyme, the company said.
Cha Bio F&C said it excluded 15 potentially harmful ingredients, including silicon dioxide, preservatives, sweeteners, colorants, artificial flavors and gluten, and that all products undergo safety testing before shipment.
A joint research team led by Kim Seong-eun, a research professor at Seoul National University Hospital’s specialized research institute, and collaborators at Harvard Medical School on Tuesday announced a “Clinical Environment Simulator (CES)” to dynamically evaluate large language model-based medical artificial intelligence.
The study was published in the latest online edition of the international journal Nature Medicine. The researchers said existing medical AI evaluations rely on static, historical data and do not reflect real clinical effects such as changes in a patient’s condition over time.
The team said medical AI should be assessed on how it responds under time pressure and resource constraints. In the system, a “patient engine” uses an LLM to generate diverse virtual paths of symptoms and treatment responses to simulate changes in patient status. A “hospital engine” tracks beds, staff and equipment status in real time.
AI decisions are scored using a “dual-metric composite score” combining patient outcomes — survival, time required for treatment and adherence to guidelines — and hospital operational efficiency, including total length of stay, emergency room throughput, and bed and equipment utilization. The researchers said the system rewards improvements in care that do not damage hospital operations, but penalizes decisions that focus on one patient at the expense of others’ access to care. It also runs adversarial stress tests under extreme scenarios such as network outages and multiple simultaneous emergencies.
The team said the work provides a “zero-risk preclinical test environment” that can demonstrate system safety without exposing patients to harm. With thoroughly validated AI taking on complex operational tasks, the researchers said, physicians could focus more fully on empathy and judgment.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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