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Wal-Mart Stores said...prescription history and other basic information on a few thousand online U.S. pharmacy customers may have been visible to other users during a four-day stretch last month due to a coding mistake...We had a software coding error for a 72-hour period from February 15 to 18 that affected a limited group of online pharmacy customers...We moved quickly to fix the issue once it was discovered...The error happened during the migration of servers and was not a hack...Fewer than 5,000 users were potentially affected, a small percentage of the number of people who logged in during the 72-hour period...Wal-Mart is contacting potentially impacted customers directly and is offering them identity protection services...

Hedge funder Kyle Bass and his Coalition for Affordable Drugs has been somewhat successful at using a new type of patent challenge to push review of "questionable" drug patents. But Bass' partner in that effort now says he doesn't trust the Patent & Trademark Office to be impartial in making those decisions...Erich Spangenberg, in an article at IPWatchdog, says PTO chief Michelle Lee and her staff have favored pharma since Bass announced last year that he and his group would target pharma patents via the inter partes review process...according to the documents, Lee and other PTO officials sat down with the industry association BIO...Bass and Spangenberg themselves called and emailed repeatedly to request a similar meeting, and they're still waiting... It's an outrage that Ms. Lee is showing incredible bias by granting meetings to the people that are gouging American patients, consumers and taxpayers and denying the same access to the people who are attempting to end this abuse...Some analysts have criticized the coalition for targeting inconsequential patents that aren't likely to change the length of a company's monopoly hold on the market, while profiting from shorting the shares of the same company. In a PTO filing, the coalition has acknowledged that Bass and his group don't have altruistic motives, but maintains that his profit motives "do not change the social value of his activities."...

NHS England is helping to design 10 ‘healthy new towns’ across the country alongside Public Health England, in the hope of developing new solutions to key healthcare challenges such as obesity and dementia...Under the plans, more than 76,000 new homes with potential capacity for around 170,000 residents will be built - with funding from local councils and the private sector - in environments specifically set up to address 21st century health needs...NHS England said it will bring together renowned clinicians, designers and technology experts to reimagine the delivery of healthcare in residential areas, "to showcase what’s possible by joining up design of the built environment with modern health and care services, and to deploy new models of technology-enabled primary care"...Ideas to be tested include fast food-free zones near schools, safe and appealing green spaces, dementia-friendly streets and digital access to GP services...The move comes as the number of working days lost in Britain due to ill health reaches 130 million, while physical inactivity is a direct factor in one in six deaths and has an overall economic impact of £7.4 billion ($10.5 billion)...

Dan Benamoz, RPh, President and CEO of Pharmacy Development Services, discusses the competitive advantages that independent pharmacies have over their retail pharmacy counterparts.

A popular smartphone app that measures blood pressure is inaccurate, missing high blood pressure readings in four out of every five patients tested, according to a research letter published online March 2 in JAMA Internal Medicine...The investigators found that, on average, the app was 12 points off for systolic and 10 points off for diastolic blood pressure. The team also found that 77.5 percent of patients with hypertensive blood pressure, defined as 140/90 mm Hg, showed normal blood pressure with the app...If someone with high blood pressure is using Instant Blood Pressure to follow their blood pressure at home, more times than not it's going to tell them they're fine...

It is a startling accusation...Did two major pharmaceutical companies, in an effort to protect their blockbuster drug, mislead editors at one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals?...Lawyers for patients suing Johnson & Johnson and Bayer over the safety of the anticlotting drug Xarelto (rivaroxaban) say the answer is yes, claiming that a letter published in The New England Journal of Medicine and written...researchers at Duke University left out critical laboratory data. They claim the companies were complicit by staying silent, helping deceive the editors while the companies were in the midst of providing the very same data to regulators in the United States and Europe...The trial compared the number of strokes and bleeding events experienced by patients taking Xarelto with those of patients using warfarin. The concern is that the faulty results may have led doctors to give patients the wrong dose of warfarin, which could have favored Xarelto...Some experts say this case is reminiscent of other instances in which drug companies concealed or altered drug-trial data in medical journals...

Under pressure to speed approval of generic medicines, the Food and Drug Administration...released data to defend its progress...the statistics indicate the agency is making headway, there are also clear signs the FDA continues to struggle with the workload...the number of full and tentative drug approvals has been rising each month since last April and reached 99 this past December...the agency also appears to be doing a better job of communicating with generic drug makers about their applications...Generic drug approval is gaining more attention thanks to the intensifying national debate over the rising cost of prescription medicines. Although prices have also risen for some of these copycat medicines, generics remain...lower-cost alternatives to brand-name drugs. And generics now account for 88 percent of all prescriptions written...The FDA is being a little disingenuous saying its backlog is almost cleared...The FDA faces...the increasingly large number of applications that drug makers are submitting...more than 4,000 have been filed in the past four years...the FDA workload will not abate...The upshot is that the rate at which new generics will find their way to pharmacy shelves is unclear — and that adds further uncertainty for health care budgets...

European regulators launched a new scheme...to speed the approval of promising new drugs that address unmet medical needs by offering enhanced support to medicine developers as they work on clinical trials...The European Medicines Agency's initiative called PRIME, which stands for PRIority MEdicines, is the latest example of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic working to evaluate truly innovative drugs more swiftly than in the past...The European agency said it expected around 100 applications a year for its new PRIME scheme, which aims to foster better planning of medicine development to help companies generate the data needed for approval more rapidly...Experimental drugs accepted into the program will get continuous support from an EMA expert, who will be appointed early in the process and provide guidance on overall development plans and regulatory strategy.

McKesson announced...its agreement to acquire Rexall Health from Katz Group for $3 billion Canadian ($2.2 billion in U.S. dollars). The acquisition is expected to strengthen McKesson’s position in Canada’s pharmaceutical supply chain...McKesson intends to acquire Rexall Health’s business, including approximately 470 retail pharmacies. Rexall Health will help McKesson leverage its existing portfolio of assets to drive growth along the entire value chain...The acquisition of Rexall Health supports McKesson’s commitment to drive value in the industry by improving healthcare solutions delivered in the pharmacy; it enhances our ability to provide best-in-class pharmacy care through an expanded retail footprint...The transaction is subject to review under the Investment Canada Act and by the Competition Bureau of Canada...

Neil Williams, PharmD, CPP, Clinical Pharmacist Coordinator for Community Care of North Carolina, discusses the key components of an effective pharmacy team.