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The upcoming serialization requirements in the European Union and the United States have presented pharmaceutical companies with the challenge of balancing data integrity with performance when designing the appropriate information architecture...The pharma sector is currently undergoing the process of introducing new systems and processes for serialization...Companies offering networks for the storing and sharing of vast amounts of serialization data are challenged with creating a shareable world that is also scalable. For pharmaceutical companies, serialization will require a paradigm shift in IT architecture to deal with the combination of the vast amount of data stored within network databases and the operational processes associated with the upcoming requirements...In an industry as highly regulated and safety critical as the pharmaceutical sector, the integrity of the real world must meet the volume and performance of the virtual world. Cloud networks for serialization must offer security, together with speed and scalability especially with the introduction of new drug traceability requirements across the globe...

Birth-control delivery services have understandably been on the rise, with each one trying to combine the best medical, financial and legal fit for patients in mobile form. A new app on the scene aims to streamline both process and cost for users by eliminating the pharmaceutical middleman and shipping wholesale medicine direct from its home base to patients' own...The Pill Club is on a mission to make getting birth control as easy and cost-effective as possible, and even fun...founder Nick Chang...these goals are made possible by a fundamental difference between his app and others on the market--namely, that it provides all prescriptions and products in-house, without needing to involve the pharmacies and pharmacy prices that many users are looking to avoid...serving as its own functional pharmacy is what will allow The Pill Club to make the difference for patients who want to acquire birth control but have faced all-too-common hurdles to getting it…I always saw that there were a number of hurdles facing women getting access to birth control. There are structural ones, such as needing to go to the doctor for a prescription, and visiting pharmacies again and again to fill that prescription...what we set out to do: to connect telemedicine with telepharmacy...

The morning-after pill is being sold in a vending machine at the University of California, Davis and many people support this type of availability...Along with condoms and pregnancy tests, the Wellness-To-Go Machine in a study lounge also dispenses the Plan B pill for $30 a box…It took economics major Parteek Singh nearly two years to get the vending machine into the lounge... Singh is getting calls from student across the country who want the same type of vending machine. "I want to see this on every college campus,"...

A Bay Area startup guru (Shawn Kernes, chief technology officer, StubHub) is gearing up to launch an on-demand mental health care app to reduce the cost and increase the availability of therapy across the country — and he's doing it from South Lake Tahoe...Enter: Larkr, an app designed to connect patients with certified mental health care professionals through video chat...There are 50 million people in the U.S. that are in need of some level of mental health care, and only about 20 million of them are actually receiving it...And in small towns with limited resources, it's even more difficult to find a practitioner when you need one...not to mention the cost when you do...By removing some of the costs associated with therapy, like office space and answering services, Larkr charges $85 for a 50-minute session and offers a simplified process through the app for submitting for reimbursement from insurance companies...Clients can book recurring appointments, get reminders for appointments, and have video therapy sessions from anywhere there is internet access...South Lake Tahoe is also a perfect example of the type of town that needs a service like Larkr...Kernes has plans to secure a physical office in South Lake Tahoe and hire a larger team as the startup progresses. The beta launch of the Larkr iPhone app is scheduled for July, with the full launch of the iPhone and Android apps slated for September...

The stars of the blockbuster "Despicable Me" movie franchise, the popular pill-shaped yellow Minions, have pitched everything from Amazon to Twinkies. This week, their evil overlord Gru is taking a starring role in an advertising campaign for 23andMe...Borrowing from the main plot point of the upcoming release of "Despicable Me 3," a 60-second commercial titled "Genetically Me" features the supervillain finding family through the results of his DNA analysis. In the film, Gru...discovers that he has a brother...through a stranger...23andMe teamed up with the $1 billion franchise for its first movie partnership in order to raise awareness about the brand and DNA testing...Personal genetics is a new and growing category. As a brand, we're tasked with not only building our brand and selling our product, but also building the category and explaining to people what it is, what they can get from it…

As value-based contracts gain increasing traction in the healthcare system, Merck and UnitedHealth are teaming up to investigate exactly what makes those deals tick and how to improve them...the duo announced a multiyear project under which they will use patient information collected by the UnitedHealth's Optum...to create and test pay-for-performance models. The goal is to explore such models' "potential for broad adoption among health insurance companies, pharmacy benefit managers and pharmaceutical companies,"...The premise of outcome-based deals is that payers or PBMs offer rebates and discounts to drugmakers depending on how well a medication helps patients — more if the health benefit is high, less if it's low. In essence, these are compromises between the former parties, which want to pay as little as possible for a drug, and medicine developers, which want coverage and formulary inclusion for their products...

Las Vegas health officials are turning a familiar piece of equipment — the vending machine — into a first-in-the-nation experiment to automate the dispensing of clean needles for intravenous drug users...The program is a joint effort between the Southern Nevada Health District, the Nevada AIDS Research and Education Society and Trac-B Exchange, which developed the machine. The idea is that making clean needles and other gear available will reduce the spread of bloodborne infections among drug users who would otherwise share the injection rigs…materials for the program were funded by private donations...Having access to clean syringes is a harm-reduction approach that’s going to allow people to protect themselves against getting communicable diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C...The machines...will distribute cardboard boxes containing clean syringes and disposal containers for used needles. They will also offer kits for wound cleaning and safe sex. Users will have to register first to receive a swipe card and unique identification number that they can use to receive up to two kits per week...Machines will be available by the end of May at Trac-B Exchange, 6114 W. Charleston Blvd.; Aid For AIDS Nevada, 1120 Almond Tree Lane; and the Community Counseling Center, 714 E. Sahara Ave.

A group of prominent cancer doctors is planning a novel assault on high drug costs, using clinical trials to show that many oncology medications could be taken at lower doses or for shorter periods without hurting their effectiveness...they point to their pilot study involving a widely prescribed drug for advanced prostate cancer. Cutting the standard dose of Zytiga by three-quarters was as effective as taking the full amount…Szmulewitz (University of Chicago oncologist) and others now want to run full trials to see whether the doses of other oral oncology drugs can be ratcheted back because of the “food effect,” which can alter how a medication is absorbed. They also plan to explore whether the duration of some prescriptions can be shortened and whether some cheaper non-cancer drugs can be substituted for expensive cancer ones. They recently created a nonprofit organization, the Value in Cancer Care consortium, to organize their work...

The nation's opioid crisis is forcing hospitals to begin rolling out non-addictive alternatives to treatments that have long been the mainstay for the severe pain of trauma and surgery, so they don't save patients' lives or limbs only to have them fall under the grip of addiction...Doctors and hospitals around the country are searching for ways to relieve extreme pain while at the same time sharply limiting what was long considered their most effective tool. It's a critical part of the effort to overcome the worst addiction crisis in U.S. history...The new approach: Mixing a variety of different medications, along with techniques like nerve blocks, spinal anesthesia and numbing lidocaine, to attack pain from multiple directions, rather than depending solely on opioids to dampen brain signals that scream "ouch." It's known by the wonky name "multimodal analgesia."...Without the opioid side effects of nausea, vomiting and constipation, patients may find it easier to start eating solid food and walking around hours after surgery...

CRISPR that favored the Broad Institute…Jennifer Doudna of the University of California...and Emmanuelle Charpentier of the University of Vienna were first to apply for patent in 2012 after discovering how the primitive bacterial system...could be used to edit genomes in simple pieces of DNA…A team at the Broad Institute led by...Feng Zhang applied for a separate patent six months later, but paid for a fast-track review process, which landed them the first CRISPR patent in 2014. The Broad's patents were for showing that the CRISPR system could be used to edit more advanced, eukaryotic cells, including animal and human cells...In its...decision, an appeals board...determined that the Broad's CRISPR patents "did not interfere" with those awarded to the UC because they were sufficiently different, allowing them to stand...In the appeal...UC is seeking a reversal of the decision, which ended before actually determining who invented the use of CRISPR in eukaryotic cells. Major commercial applications of CRISPR are expected to be in eukaryotic cells...geneticist George Church said he expects the disputes will end in cross-licensing...I'm not that interested in the details of who pays who what. We're all going to do very well, including the patients. That was evident from the very beginning…