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...Sanofi has teamed up with Google to work on innovations, aimed at using emerging data technologies to change how medicines and health services will be delivered in future...Sanofi and Google will use data sets to improve their understanding of key diseases and extract patients’ insights and feedback...Combining Sanofi’s biologic innovations and scientific data with Google’s industry-leading capabilities, from cloud computing to state-of-the-art artificial intelligence...READ MORE

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approved a request...from Washington state to negotiate value-based drug rebate agreements with pharmaceutical manufacturers in its Medicaid program...The approval makes Washington the fourth state to test such an arrangement; similar policies have already been given the OK in Oklahoma, Michigan and Colorado, according to an announcement from CMS...Washington officials are aiming to test a “subscription” model for hepatitis C drugs...In this model, Medicaid would pay a fixed annual sum to a drug company for the hepatitis C medication, purchasing an unrestricted supply of the drug... CMS is committed to increasing states’ flexibility to develop policies that lower costs, increase the predictability of expenses and improve access for patients...READ MORE

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Using data from privately-insured adults, new findings from The University of Texas...revealed that there is a lower level of opioids prescribed in states that have allowed the use of medical marijuana...We found that the overall prescription opioid use increased by age, which we expected. But, when we looked at the results within different age groups, opioid prescription rates varied depending on the stringency of state cannabis laws. In particular, states that implemented medical cannabis laws had lower rates of opioid prescription in people aged 18 to 54...Initially, opioids were seen as a way to ease pain and their use became widespread over time, with little attention paid to possible side effects or the risk of addiction...READ MORE

Medical software company Allscripts has bought ZappRx, a start-up that aimed to modernize how people access prescription medicines...Allscripts’ core business is selling electronic medical record software to hospitals and other health providers...ZappRx specializes in helping people access the class of so-called specialty medicines, which includes expensive and high-complex or high-cost interventions...READ MORE

Woodcock is director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. She sat down with BioPharma Dive...for a wide-ranging interview that touched on accelerated approvals, emerging clinical trial designs and her long-term concerns for the agency...

• Renewed debate over accelerated approval
• An adaptive future for clinical trials
• Optimism on continuous manufacturing

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A Canadian advisory council studying prescription drug coverage said...the federal government should create a C$15.3 billion ($11.5 billion) universal, single-payer public pharmacare system, and warned that the current system requires a major overhaul...Canada is the only country with a universal health care system that does not include universal coverage for prescription drugs. Most prescriptions are paid for through employer-funded drug plans, while some are covered by government programs for the elderly, or people with low incomes or very high costs...If implemented in full, the plan would likely cut into profits of insurers and drugmakers in Canada, while saving employers and patients money...READ MORE

Samantha DiGrande, Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

A unit of Insys Therapeutics Inc pleaded guilty...to fraud charges as part of an $225 million deal with the U.S. Justice Department resolving claims that the drugmaker bribed doctors to prescribe an addictive opioid medication...The plea...by the Chandler, Arizona-based Insys’ operating subsidiary, came in one of the few criminal prosecutions to date of a corporation accused of helping fuel the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic...Insys is facing growing financial pressures as a result of the U.S. probe and a decline in sales of its flagship fentanyl pain product, Subsys, which it has said could prompt the company to seek bankruptcy protection...Beyond the plea by subsidiary Insys Pharma Inc, Insys has also entered into a five-year deferred prosecution agreement with the government and agreed to pay $30 million in the criminal case and $195 million to resolve civil claims...READ MORE