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Food and Drug Administration…revealed that it is working to build a software platform for precision medicine and an informatics community around it… contracted with DNAnexus, to create open source cloud-based software for sharing genomic information…will help..advance the science around the accuracy and reproducibility of next generation sequencing-based tests,..

Britain’s competition watchdog has accused Pfizer and Flynn Pharma of breaching UK and European law by ramping up the cost of an epilepsy drug,..by as much as 2,600 percent…Competition and Markets Authority said …each abused a dominant position by charging "excessive and unfair" prices for phenytoin sodium capsules.

Sen. Brown … introduced…legislation, …Stopping Medication Abuse and Protecting Seniors Act, to address prescription drug abuse by cracking down on doctor shopping… creation of a Medicare lock-in program ..through better monitoring of prescription patterns on the part of doctors, pharmacies and patients...

Prosecutors say they have identified 11 new victims, including a woman who was drugged and raped, in the case of a Las Vegas doctor accused of videotaping sexual acts with an underage girl….Dr. Binh Minh Chung, `, appeared ….to increase his bail to $1 million… total of 28 counts..

hospitals urged antitrust regulators this week to consider whether health insurer Anthem Inc’s planned acquisition of rival Cigna Corp would boost healthcare costs…. threatens to reduce competition…

Verified Pharmacy Program processes,… new application will facilitate a more efficient application process for pharmacies… to make pharmacy licensure, inspection, and disciplinary action information available to the boards of pharmacy to support licensure decisions….can assist pharmacies, particularly those…in multiple states, by facilitating the sharing of verified pharmacy data and providing inspection services,…

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has suspended enrollment in two Medicare Part D plans sold by Torchmark Corp. because of "widespread and systemic" failures that contributed to the program's highest complaint rate,..."intermediate sanctions" that will result in suspension of enrollment and marketing activities …

Half of primary care physicians across the country view the increasing use of quality-of-care metrics and penalties for unnecessary hospitalizations as potentially troubling for patient care,..see healthcare information technology as a boon for quality care…increased use of quality metrics to assess provider performance is having a negative impact… programs that impose financial penalties for...re-admissions are having a negative effect…

48 states…all have definitions of telehealth or telemedicine written into …their Medicaid program, differences in those definitions are creating "confusing environments" for end users, .. 47 states have some form of reimbursement for telehealth… how it is reimbursed varies widely…16 states reimburse for remote patient monitoring… remote monitoring include only offering payments to home health agencies…limiting which conditions are reimbursed.

Medical marijuana dispensaries are still months away from opening in Southern Nevada and local government officials are already trying to get licenses for more of the expected big-money makers…each in line to collect…hundreds of thousands — of dollars in application, business and license fees…doesn't include the fees from medical pot growhouses, production facilities and testing centers, or the sums municipalities will get from each of those establishments in local property and state-administered sales taxes...