Week in review: The future of healthcare, our favorite DEMO companies, and more

Here’s our rundown of the week’s tech and business news. First up, the five most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Health care: It’s time for technology — “Even the most partisan players in the debate over health care reform agree on two things. One, that this is crazy. And two, that technology can help.”
New Halo game has a secret game within the game — “But apparently that was plenty of time for Fourth Wall Studios to dream up a new game within the game for fans of ‘alternate reality’ games, which are game-like stories that unfold in both the real and fictional worlds. The game is entitled ‘Sadie’s Story’ and it unfolds in audio form as the human soldiers hunt down the enemy Covenant aliens in the future African city of New Mombasa.”
Unchallenged by Nvidia, AMD makes the world’s most powerful graphics chips — and it ships them too — “Today, the company is announcing that its ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics chips will be the fastest ever created. And they’re available to buy now in new PCs you can order today.”
Do dysfunctional families breed entrepreneurs? — “Her response was surprising, ‘Steve, almost all my CEO’s came from very tough childhoods.’”
MMS vs 12seconds — videomail wars begin — “I don’t have any brilliant insights here except that it’s 100% certain that MMS will spawn some immensely popular iPhone app that no one thought of until MMS went live.”
And here are five more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or just fun:
Best of DEMO — VentureBeat’s picks for the 10 best companies — “VentureBeat’s staff has chosen our top 10 picks of DEMOfall 09, the emerging technology conference that we co-produced.”
DEMOfall09: Your guide to VentureBeat’s coverage — Speaking of DEMO, this points to all our coverage of the 70 presenting companies.
Twitter confirms its latest round; no word on size — “Twitter confirmed its latest round of funding, reportedly valuing it at $1 billion.”
A123 IPO charges the market as share price jumps 50 percent — “Yesterday, we reported that advanced battery company A123Systems‘ initial public offering would be a bellwether for the rest of the energy storage industry, whether it soared or flopped. With all eyes fixed on its predicted $13.50 share price, the stock (AONE) proceeded to wallop the market, closing at $20.29 a share.”
VentureBeat Profiles, a directory of info and buzz about companies — “I’m pleased to introduce a site called VentureBeat Profiles, which lists comprehensive information about tens of thousands of companies and executives. We just launched the site this morning. It offers all kinds of ways to find, discover and share information about companies.”