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Health care just got a whole lot more convenient in Manhattan, where a pair of health app developers …began coupling their offerings in what may become the ultimate in fast service — doctors to your door by way of Pager quickly followed by an on-demand prescription delivery from Zipdrug...Pager was launched…a healthcare startup reinventing the traditional doctor-patient experience…connects patients to board-certified doctors who make home, office or hotel visits within two hours…. Zipdrug…employs a trained delivery staff who picks up prescriptions at the pharmacy of the patient's choice and delivers them to the patient's doorstep.

Novartis is using an oft-overlooked social network in the pharma world--Pinterest--for one of its campaigns… using the image-oriented site to set up malaria-fighting stories in graphic-novel form…The…Swiss drugmaker designed three boards on Pinterest, including

• "Mosquito Gauntlet"…odyssey of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, through a battery of ruthless technology,..chapter headings such as "The Smack-Down" and "The Puddle of Doom"…tells the story of recent efforts to combat malaria and also mentions Novartis' malaria pipeline at the end.
• "Mosquito Mayhem"…asking viewers to use the company's pins to "build your own mosquito misadventure,"..
• "M-Force Trading Cards"…illustrated trading cards with a "task force" of malaria-fighting superheroes….For example, "Agent Sparrow"

Smart medicines that tell doctors when their patients have taken them moved a step closer to reality after a company developing the first "digital pill" had its drug application accepted…the pill, produced by Proteus Digital Health, will help ensure patients stick to their prescriptions…Food and Drug Administration had agreed to review its device which is embedded in a schizophrenia medicine (aripiprazole)…new regulatory pathway that allows the pharmaceuticals industry to combine its medical innovation with innovation in software.."smart pill" contains a tiny ingestible sensor that detects when the drug has reached the stomach…It communicates with a wearable patch…then transmits the information to a mobile device.

AstraZeneca and The University of Manchester…announced a collaboration harnessing clinical bioinformatics to deliver personalised healthcare for cancer patients. The five-year agreement will see the organisations apply clinical trial bioinformatics to better identify the right cancer treatment for the right patient at the right time…AstraZeneca will provide a total of £11.5 million ($17.5million) to support clinical bioinformatics research led by…the…Centre for Cancer Biomarker Sciences at the Manchester Cancer Research Centre.

VoicePort International…announced that its suite of adherence solutions, PharmaPhonetics would be launching in Costco Canada pharmacies…. is a service that focuses on automated prescription pickup notifications to ensure patients pick up their medicine and take it in a timely manner… medication synchronization services, patient counseling, written translation and instruction services..

Egalet Corporation…launched…An immediate-release oral formulation, Oxaydo (oxycodone HCI) is intended to manage acute and chronic moderate to severe pain where the use of an opioid analgesic is appropriate,..it is one of the first immediate-release oxycodone tablets designed to discourage abuse by snorting…designed to discourage abuse with no food effect…

Novo Nordisk…announced that a research collaboration has been initiated with the Langer Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for what is hoped to be the next generation of drug delivery devices for the administration of peptides… as an alternative to parenteral or injection-based delivery of peptides… creating new approaches for delivering drugs such as peptides and proteins across complex barriers in the body such as the blood-brain barrier, the intestine, the lung and the skin.

Employers with onsite pharmacies are seeing a return on investment in the form of increased medication adherence among their health plan members…Onsite pharmacies provide employees with a convenient option for filling discounted prescriptions that is integrated with other employer-sponsored wellness programs. These onsite initiatives aim to contain employers’ health care expenditures while supporting healthy lifestyles and increasing productivity across health plan members.

National Community Pharmacists Association…announced that it will collaborate with consumer-direct lab testing innovator, Ulta Lab Tests, to roll out an online community lab testing platform to participating community pharmacy members across the country. The arrangement will offer community pharmacy patients direct access to lab tests and health screenings...customers can order select low-priced lab tests without the need to obtain a prescription from a local physician…then can easily access lab test information…review and track their test results for each biomarker from their personal and secured dashboard at their convenience.

NIH award enables researchers to take deep dive into two genomic disorders (familial hypercholesterolemia and chronic rhinosinusitis)…Two Geisinger researchers,..have been awarded more than $3.5 million as part of a national effort to better understand the genetic basis of disease. The research will lead to tailoring medical treatment based on patients' genetic makeup…is part of the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics, or eMERGE, Network administered by the National Human Genome Research Institute.