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HealthNewsReview.org is now 15 months old, has reviewed more than 400 stories, and has already won a Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism, an e-Healthcare Leadership Award, and a Mirror Award for media industry reporting.

The Star Tribune offered a business section feature yesterday on local doctors finding new uses for the $1.2 million Da Vinci robotic surgery devices.

At $1.2 million, you bet they want to and need to find new uses.

The story explained that the robotic device came on the market just 8 years ago, that Minnesota hospitals started using it just three years ago., and that there are already nine da Vincis in the state.

But the story failed to address the obvious followup questions: how many does a state or a community need? Who's asking these questions?

The story was also completely devoid of any performance data on risks and benefits.

Finally, the story included a quote from a urologist using the device, who said

that getting the da Vinci was "physician driven," as doctors saw its benefits. Then its use became "patient driven," as people went to the Internet and discovered there was another way to have their surgeries done.

Such a comment can't go unchallenged. If physicians and hospital marketing folks weren't pushing the expensive devices, there would be no "patient driven" move.

Medical technology assessment in the U.S. is a huge question. This story didn't deliver many answers.

The Los Angeles Times last week published a series of articles on drug marketing.

Excerpts:

"In a nation that consumed $279-billion worth of prescription medications in 2006 - spending 80% of that on brand name drugs - their efforts appear to be paying off. Americans filling a prescription choose brand-name products 37% of the time, even though three quarters of all prescription drugs in the U.S. are available in cheaper generics."

"Each day in the United States, an army of roughly 100,000 pharmaceutical company sales reps storms the waiting rooms and offices of the nation's 311,000 office-based physicians."

"The drug industry, according to estimates by the Center for Public Integrity, has spent $758 million on lobbying - more than any other industry - since 1998."