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Brian Haug, President of Pharmacy and Managed Markets, Pharmacy Times (PTNN) This weekly video program highlights the latest in pharmacy news, product news, and more.

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

Brian Haug, President of Pharmacy and Managed Markets, Pharmacy Times (PTNN) This weekly video program highlights the latest in pharmacy news, product news, and more.

It’s an edict that comes out every autumn in many hospitals: If health care workers don’t get a flu shot, they will face consequences. Some make vaccinations a condition of employment. Others require unvaccinated staff to wear surgical masks near patients for weeks during flu season...But a new study is calling into question the scientific evidence underpinning these increasingly common hospital policies — and could fuel challenges to the contentious orders...The study...concludes that the research used to justify mandatory flu shots for health sector workers is flawed, and that the policies cannot plausibly produce the benefits that had widely been assumed...the bottom line of our paper is to say there is no valid scientific evidence, even now, underpinning enforced health care worker immunizations...trying to mandate that health care workers take the flu vaccine is well-intentioned, but is taking away resources and the focus on what our main priority needs to be, which is getting a better influenza vaccine...

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology present a new method that should enable controlled drug delivery into the bloodstream using DNA computers. In the journal Nature Communications the team...describes how it has developed the first DNA computer capable of detecting several antibodies in the blood and performing subsequent calculations based on this input. This is an important step towards the development of smart, 'intelligent' drugs that may allow better control of the medication for rheumatism and Crohn's disease, for example, with fewer side-effects and at lower cost...An analogy for the method presented…is a security system that opens the door depending on the person standing in front of it. If the camera recognizes the person, the door unlocks, but if the person is unknown, the door remains locked. "Research into diagnostic tests tends to focus on the 'recognition', but what is special about this system is that it can think and that it can be connected to actuation such as drug delivery...

Kelly Walsh, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

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

In a hotly anticipated judgment, the U.S. patent office...ruled that key patents held by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard on the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 do not overlap with competing claims from the University of California...UC may now receive a patent covering broader claims on the revolutionary tech...the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled the claims of UC and the Broad to be patentably distinct subject matter, leading the three judges to declare a judgment of non-interference...Put into layman's terms, the claims of the UC and the Broad are distinct enough so as to be separately patentable and therefore don't overlap with each other. This effectively supports the Broad's existing patents, while sending the UC's pending patent application back to the initial patent examiner...UC with a patent on use of CRISPR in all cells and the Broad with a patent for use of CRISPR specifically in eukaryotic cells...If that were to happen, biotechs operating in the space could end up having to license the tech from both UC and the Broad.

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

Kelly Walsh, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.