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When patients get to edit their medical records, they tend to leave out important stuff. That was the conclusion of researchers at the Regenstrief Institute, the Indiana University School of Medicine and Eskenazi Health, after they conducted the first experiment ever in which real patients were allowed to control what parts of their medical records the doctors and nurses caring for them were allowed to see. During a six-month trial, 105 patients at one of Eskenazi’s primary health care clinics were able to indicate which of their clinicians could have access to information about sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and mental health. The Eskenazi health care providers were able to override their patients' preferences if they felt the patients’ health care required it, but researchers carefully tracked each time they did this. A total of 49 patients withheld at least some of their medical histories from at least some of the clinicians caring for them. "Without an understanding of how medicine is practiced, a patient may not appreciate why access to their health information is needed by medical team members other than their physician or nurse, for example, a specialist or a clinical lab or unit clerk," said Dr. Bill Tierney, CEO of the Regenstrief Institute, in a prepared statement. The findings of the study were published in five separate articles published as a January 2015 supplement to the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Local real estate development company Cornerstone Cos. Inc. has been hired by California-based American Healthcare Investors Management Services Inc. to act as the exclusive leasing and management agent for a 676,473-square-foot portfolio of medical office buildings in Indianapolis, Evansville, Munster and Cincinnati. New York-based NorthStar Realty Finance recently acquired the portfolio in a $4 billion merger with American Healthcare Investors. Cornerstone now manages 2.5 million rentable square feet of medical office space."Cornerstone's strategic focus solely on medical real estate has allowed our organization to become one of the state's leaders in health care leasing, management and development,” Cornerstone President Tag Birge said in a prepared statement.

The Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, housed at the Indiana University School of Medicine, recently awarded more than $100,000 to researchers seeking to identify chemical compounds that could become new drugs for cancer, drug-resistant infections and chronic pain. The grants are the first from the Indiana Drug Discovery Alliance, which the members of the translational science institute—IU, Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame—created earlier this year in conjunction with Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. "Scientists are increasingly asked to present strong evidence for the effectiveness of proposed new therapies before they even begin to reach out to public or private partners for funds,” said Dr. Anantha Shekhar, director of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, in a prepared statement. “We want to provide the boost needed to generate evidence that attracts external support and results in new products that save lives in the near future." The grants will fund seven projects: Theodore Cummins, the interim chairman of pharmacology and toxicology at the IU School of Medicine, is focused on chronic pain management; Dr. Chang-Deng Hu, a professor of medicinal chemistry at Purdue University, is looking for drugs to fight such cancers as leukemia and lymphoma; Julia C. Van Kessel, a research scientist in biochemistry at IU’s Bloomington campus, is looking for agents to fight antibiotic-resistant infections; Tao Lu, a biochemist at the IU School of Medicine, is investigating drugs for colon cancer; Samy Meroueh, also a biochemist at the IU School of Medicine and a member of the IU Simon Cancer Center, is focused on breast cancer; Dr. Maria Teresa Rizzo, a professor of medicine and of pharmacology and toxicology at the IU School of Medicine, is looking for treatments for glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer; Dr. Stanley Spinola, chairman of microbiology and immunology at the IU School of Medicine, is focused on drug-resistant bacteria, such as those responsible for urinary tract infections, pneumonia, sepsis and sexually transmitted diseases; and Jingwu Xie, a professor of pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine, is working on treatments for pancreatic cancer.