- The Promotion of Medical Products in the 21st Century – Off-label Marketing and First Amendment Concerns (jama.jamanetwork.com)
On August 7, 2014, Federal District Court …blocked the Food and Drug Administration from enforcing restrictions on the marketing and promotion of off-label use of the drug icosapent ethyl (Vascepa),..If the case heralds the future of jurisprudence, responsibility for the oversight of the truthfulness of pharmaceutical promotions may shift from the nation’s leading science-based regulatory agency, the FDA, to the courts. If it does, the market for medications in the 21st century may revert to a time of more claims and less evidence to guide clinical care… Judges should refrain from using the First Amendment to undermine core regulatory functions.
- Back To School Grades For 24 Pharma And Biotech Giants (forbes.com)
…it’s time to dole out some grades to drug companies. …I give each company a letter grade, just like the ones you got in school. An A+ requires changing the face of medicine and making a ton of money. An F means a drug safety crisis and a financial failure – or a severe ethical breach. Everything else is in-between. I do not believe in grade inflation.
Top of the Class
- Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ..... A-
- Valeant Pharmaceuticals ..... B+
- Gilead Sciences, Inc ..... B+
- Novo Nordisk ..... B
- Eli Lilly and Company ..... B
- Allergan plc ..... B
- Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated ..... B
- Illumina ..... B
- Novartis ..... B
- Teva Pharmaceutical Industries ..... B-
- Sanofi ..... B-
- Celgene Corporation ..... B-
- Pfizer Inc. ..... B-
- Bristol-Myers Squibb ..... B-
- Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ..... B-
- Merck & Co., Inc. ..... B-
- Shire PLC Sponsored ADR ..... C+
- Roche Holding ..... C+
- Amgen Inc. ..... C+
- AbbVie, Inc. ..... C+
- Johnson & Johnson ..... C+
- GlaxoSmithKline ..... C
- Astrazeneca PLC Sponsored ADR ..... C
- Biogen Inc. ..... C
- 4 Nontraditional Jobs for Pharmacists (pharmacytimes.com)
Stuck in a pharmacy career rut? Not interested in the traditional job options in retail, independent, or hospital pharmacy? Here are 4 nontraditional jobs for pharmacists:
- NASA Pharmacist
- Nuclear Pharmacist
- Prison Pharmacist
- Medical Writer
- FDA staff flag likely dosing errors with Purdue’s opioid painkiller (reuters.com)
Food and Drug Administration…have expressed concerns over likely errors in administering Purdue Pharma's fast-acting oxycodone…(Avridi) that could result in inadequate relief…The drug is designed to be taken every 4-6 hours on an empty stomach…absorption…can be substantially delayed in the presence of food,.. "food effect" may reduce the effectiveness and safety of the drug,.. Inadequate pain control caused by presence of food could lead to overdosing…
- 5 Ways Pharmacists Can Show Empathy (pharmacytimes.com)
Empathy is neither sympathy nor compassion,...It is also not feeling sorry for a patient…In medical interviewing, being empathic means listening to the total communication—words, feelings, and gestures—and letting the patient know that you are really hearing what he or she is saying,..Empathy can create better relationships with patients and lead to better therapeutic outcomes.
Here are 5 ways pharmacists can show empathy toward patients:
- Show respect to receive respect.
- Encourage patients to express themselves.
- Put yourself in the patient’s shoes.
- Recognize and address patients’ fears.
- Use interchangeable and additive responses.
- New Frost & Sullivan report identifies 6 themes for new healthcare economy (drugstorenews.com)
A growing number of evolving health needs means the proliferation of many models,…there are six big themes that will drive new business models in health care. Those themes include:
- scalability
- decision support
- process change
- customization
- integration
- services to enhance product delivery
- Polypharmacy in Elderly Patients: A Pervasive Problem (pharmacytimes.com)
Because current health care practice focuses on diagnosing and prescribing, the need to taper, reduce, or discontinue inappropriate medication therapy receives relatively little attention. Few clinical guidelines cover drug deprescribing, and this lack of evidence-based direction contributes to prescribers’ hesitancy or reluctance to touch treatment regimens that may have originated from a different practice setting. But failure to deprescribe medications that are contributing to adverse side effects can have serious consequences,...
- Problems Associated with Automation in the Pharmacy Dispensing Process (pharmacytimes.com)
Pat Basu, MD, MBA, chief medical officer of Doctor on Demand, discusses problems associated with automation in the pharmacy dispensing process.
- How Technology and Legislative Issues Could Affect Pharmacy (pharmacytimes.com)
Pat Basu, MD, MBA, chief medical officer of Doctor on Demand, discusses legislative issues and technology that could affect pharmacy.
- Roche CEO attacks Britain’s ‘stupid’ cancer drug system (reuters.com)
Roche Chief Executive Severin Schwan criticized Britain's health system…after two of the company's cancer drugs were dropped from use, calling it a "stupid" way to control costs that could jeopardize research in the country… Schwan said there would be also knock-on effects for research in Britain, since if drugs like Avastin were not available as standard then Roche would not be able to do certain clinical trials in the country…Eventually, this will hurt us on the research side in the UK…