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England's Cancer Drugs Fund has been ..dealing with budget overruns and backlash from drugmakers and patients unhappy with the fund's decision to ax certain meds from its list…National Institute of Health and Care Excellence will turn the CDF into a "managed access" fund for cancer drugs,… original plans for the CDF, established …essentially bypass NICE and provide funding for treatments rejected by the cost-effectiveness gatekeeper.

Royal Pharmaceutical Society and National Association of Primary Care have launched a consultation on radical proposals to integrate general practice and community pharmacy… The new proposals are designed to create an environment in which community pharmacists and GPs work much closer together, re-purposing resources to alleviate pressure points in general practice and improve patient care.

Wearable devices will soon play a meaningful role in the monitoring of healthcare that goes well beyond the niche activity trackers that are on the market today, … Future functionality will include real-time, remote patient monitoring and post-surgery rehabilitation… will eventually offer support to healthcare institutions by sharing real-time data collected by the consumer..

Arkansas has bought drugs it plans to use for lethal injections,… as it looks to end a decade-long hiatus on executions…law allows information on the drugs used in executions and the vendors supplying them to remain secret…reports said the drugs included midazolam,..

pharma industry group in Australia has warned the government that it needs to do something to relieve the high costs of drug manufacturing in the country or continue to lose exports. Drug exports from Australia have fallen to $2.5 billion from $4 billion in 2012. Industry group Medicines Australia blamed high wages, taxes and a tangle of regulations for discouraging drugmakers from building or expanding there..

Flow restrictor on bottle necks helps prevent children from overdosing..Food and Drug Administration has endorsed the use of a safety device for bottles of children's medication containing liquid acetaminophen,…Called a flow restrictor, the device fits into the top of a bottle to prevent kids from inadvertently squeezing or sucking out too much liquid..

Food and Drug Administration has issued a new guide for parents about vaccinating their children. The online guide includes information about the benefits and risks of vaccination, the types of vaccines children routinely receive as well as a section with questions that parents are asking about vaccination.

European Medicines Agency Management Board endorsed the European Union Telematics Strategy and Implementation Roadmap 2015-2017 …provides a concrete outline of the EU Telematics strategy and its implementation … cover areas such as governance structure implementation, clinical trials regulation, management and processing of electronic submissions for marketing-authorisation applications …safety information on human and veterinary medicinal products, data integration and pharmacovigilance…

Data show that these ads certainly increase the sales of an advertised drug… these ads also tend to trigger a negative response from the public, This use of drug promotion via social media is far more dangerous than TV drug ads. Getting celebrities with millions of followers to tout your product,…can have a big impact… FDA needs to crack down on this as vigorously as it does other forms of drug promotion....

GAO found indicators of potential prescription-medication fraud and abuse among thousands of Medicaid beneficiaries and hundreds of prescribers during fiscal year 2011…

• More than 16,000 of the 5.4 million beneficiaries potentially engaged in "doctor shopping,"
• About 700 beneficiaries received more than a 1-year supply of the same drug…
• Recommendation: ..enhance monitoring of potentially wasteful or abusive practices in the Medicaid program, …require states to report to CMS whether their state has lock-in programs for abusers of noncontrolled substances and prohibitions on pharmacy automatic refills, …