Author: Peter

Emerging markets have lost their luster for Big Pharma making drug firms ever more dependent on the United States for growth just as American anger over high medicine prices is building...A few years ago, the developing world was seen as a savior as patent after patent expired across the United States and Europe, but emerging market sales growth at the top drug firms slowed to less than two percent in the latest quarter...Forecasts...now suggest the United States will account for 55 percent of sales growth between 2016 and 2020, with emerging markets only contributing 30 percent...Many companies' sales in developing economies come from so-called branded generics, or off-patent medicines that command a premium to those made by local suppliers because the Western drugmaker's name is a proxy for quality...That business is now under threat as governments promote cheaper unbranded products as a route to universal healthcare...There is a lot of emphasis on providing essential medicines, which is providing growth for cheap local generics but not necessarily for multinational companies…

...2bPrecise (subsidiary of Allscripts) is conducting an early adopter program at the National Institutes of Health...The goal is to take clinical and genomic information and make it actionable, structured, machine-readable and machine-learning for physicians. And then take those results and inject the relevant information back into workflows...We focus on the last mile of genomics and cross-collating clinical info with genomics and bring it to the point-of-care...With NIH, we’re putting this to the test and demonstrating the value of genomics in clinical and research activity…People are recognizing genomics is needed, powerful and useful...What’s missing are regulations and reimbursement around this type of data. As healthcare continues to move into this space, I think we’ll see another spike in interest, with a huge level of interest and motivation to try to use genomics more…

Prescription drug prices increased 6.3% over the last year, according to consumer price index data...You’ve been paying more for prescription drugs — and it’s not just Mylan’s EpiPen...Prices for prescription drugs increased 6.3% over the last 12 months, the highest year-long prescription drug price increase in over a year and a half, government consumer price index data shows...Data from the CPI, which examines changes in what consumers are paying for day-to-day goods and services, lends support to the idea that broad changes in health care are having repercussions for consumers alongside health insurers and other players...Drug prices are indeed rising, and have been for many years. But the phenomenon is exacerbated by another health care trend, the rise of high deductible health insurance plans, which shift more of health care costs to consumers...Though other factors, such as new terms of health insurance plans, could also be at play, “I think the hidden secret here is it’s the consumer’s out-of-pocket costs that are increasing,”...Search data...shows that consumers have reacted to the trend by shopping around...

Between 2006 and 2012, antibiotic use in hospitals in general did not change, and the use of a class of drugs tied most closely to antibiotic resistance actually increased, according to a new study...We believe the increases in the use of more powerful and ‘last resort’ antibiotics should prompt further exploration and, where indicated, actions to improve the use of these antibiotics...While the optimal level of antibiotic use or distribution of classes is not really known for every hospital, we know from other studies that inpatient prescribing of antibiotics for some infections is often inappropriate...overall antibiotic use stayed level over time, use of third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins, macrolides, glycopeptides, carbapenems and tetracyclines increased significantly...Doctors are human, they’re worried, they’re behind, they’re concerned about what the patient wants...What we’re proposing is that the strategies to address this should come from a psychological perspective...and should target doctors who give out the most antibiotics...If social pressure leads to overprescribing, maybe it can also curb prescribing rates...

Kelly Walsh, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

GlaxoSmithKline is cutting the price charged for its pneumococcal vaccine when given to refugees, following complaints about the product's "exorbitant" cost by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres...The British drugmaker said...it would provide Synflorix, which protects children against pneumonia and other diseases, at a discounted price of $3.05 per dose to recognized civil society organizations...In Greece, MSF said it had been forced to pay 50 pounds ($65) a dose in local pharmacies in order to vaccinate thousands of refugee children fleeing from conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan...GSK said its offer was made on the basis that others would not seek to reference the special price, which is intended solely to support refugee populations...Previously, the low price of $3.05 price has only been available to the world’s poorest countries.

For all intents and purposes, California Governor Jerry Brown held his nose...as he signed a bill that allows state agencies and businesses to keep EpiPen devices on hand for emergencies...While Brown readily acknowledged that EpiPen is a lifesaver for people with allergic reactions, he simultaneously issued two letters — one to the California State Assembly and the other to US Senate and House leaders — to complain about “predatory pricing” by the manufacturer, Mylan Pharmaceuticals...“I cannot take this action without registering my strong objection to the bill sponsor’s recently reported pricing maneuvers,” he wrote in one of the letters in which he referred to a successful lobbying campaign by Mylan to urge states to make EpiPen widely available...

U.S. lawmakers...blasted Mylan NV Chief Executive Heather Bresch for sharply increasing prices for the EpiPen emergency allergy treatment at a congressional hearing in which Republicans and Democrats questioned the reasons behind rising U.S. drug costs...The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called Bresch to testify in the wake of public outrage over EpiPen, whose list price has risen to $600 for a pair of the devices compared with $100 in 2007...Lawmakers in turn described the actions as "sickening," "disgusting" and showing "blatant disrespect" for American families who can no longer afford the life-saving device for children susceptible to severe allergic reactions...At several points, they cut off Bresch's efforts to explain the intricacies of U.S. pharmaceutical pricing, including how health insurers and other payers take a percentage of treatment sales...

Healthcare organizations and manufacturers are very vulnerable when it comes to their data protection measures, according to the Intel Security 2016 Data Protection Benchmark Study...While the gap between data loss and breach discovery is increasing, healthcare organizations are “sitting ducks,”...the typical data loss prevention approach is increasingly ineffective against new theft targets...Not only is data getting outside of company control, it has probably been used or sold before the theft is noticed...Discovering and preventing breaches internally requires a better understanding of who is behind these thefts, what they are most likely to steal, how they are getting the data out, and the most effective steps to take to improve data loss prevention systems and processes...Healthcare is likely a top target because it holds desireable information - PHI and intellectual property. At the same time, healthcare typically has weaker systems that can be easier for hackers to access...

The experimental drug (eteplirsen) that federal regulators approved Monday will only be used by a few thousand patients...But the approval may have set a precedent that could rocket through the health care system, opening the door for drug makers to get more medicines to market — even with scant evidence that they work...The...decision...elated families struggling with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare and deadly disease....It also touched off a barbed debate between those who applauded the move as giving hope to desperate patients — and those who warned it would backfire since there is no clear evidence the drug works...The approval sets “a dangerous precedent,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research. “A decade from now, will we look back at this approval as a turning point when the FDA ceased to function as a public health agency?”