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An experimental Merck vaccine is showing 100% effectiveness against the Ebola virus, according to results of a trial in Guinea published in The Lancet...The vaccine was tested on people in West Africa from March 23, 2015 through Jan. 20, 2016, and has not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration or any other agency, but is considered so effective than an emergency stockpile of 300,000 doses has already been created should there be another outbreak…the vaccine, called rVSV-ZEBOV is a recombinant replication competent vesicular stomatitis virus-based vaccine that expresses a surface glycoprotein of the Zaire strain of Ebola virus...

Physician's Weekly, a point-of-care company that provides continuing medical education services to physicians, launched its first CME course using Facebook Live...the publishing company worked with continuing education provider Advancing Knowledge in Healthcare and Dr. Zubin Damania, also known as ZDoggMD, a physician personality who is known for transforming popular songs with his own music video and lyrics that focus on health, to launch its first accredited CME and continuing education Facebook livecast for physicians and nurses…Damania presented a 39-minute interactive CME course...on how to better understand patients' decisions that include moral choices such as end-of-life care and vaccinations...viewers were able to post comments and receive replies in real time from the physician...Damania's Facebook Live course garnered more than 34,000 views and 600 comments during his live session. Those numbers are expected to grow...The Facebook Live course is the first in a series of CME initiatives Physician's Weekly has planned for social-media platforms. The company will continue working with AKH and ZDoggMD to develop more CME livecasts, including the launch of live tweet chats in the coming months, and is considering using Snapchat in the future...

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.

Sara Belanger, with The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network.

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

U.S. sales and distribution of antibiotics approved for use in food-producing animals increased 1 percent from 2014 to 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a report...Scientists have warned that regular use of antibiotics to promote growth and prevent illness in healthy farm animals contributes to the rise of dangerous, antibiotic-resistant "superbug" infections, which...pose a significant threat to global health...An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics used to fight human infections and to ensure the safety of surgery and other invasive procedures are sold in the United States for use in meat production...In 2015, sales and distribution of those medically important antibiotics for food production rose 2 percent...Medically important antimicrobials accounted for 62 percent of the domestic sales of all antimicrobials approved for use in farm animals...McDonald's USA and some other chains have switched to serving chicken raised without antibiotics important to human health…

...top Food and Drug Administration officials published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (Real-World Evidence — What Is It and What Can It Tell Us? )...calling into question some of the potential uses of real-world evidence but also acknowledging that real world research and the concepts of a planned intervention and randomization “are entirely compatible."...while acknowledging that such (real-world) evidence “can inform therapeutic development, outcomes research, patient care, research on health care systems, quality improvement, safety surveillance, and well-controlled effectiveness studies,” the authors caution that “the confluence of large data sets of uncertain quality and provenance, the facile analytic tools that can be used by nonexperts, and a shortage of researchers with adequate methodologic savvy could result in poorly conceived study and analytic designs that generate incorrect or unreliable conclusions...“Accordingly, if we are to realize the full promise of such evidence, we must be clear about what it is and how it can be used most effectively, and we must have appropriate expectations about what it can tell us,”...

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 with The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care, from the Managed Markets News Network.

Merck KGaA has taken a page from consumer packaged goods’ playbook for its consumer OTC marketing strategy—and it's working...The German-based maker of a $1 billion portfolio of healthcare brands refers to the strategy as creating “lovebrands,” in a recent report on the companywide success of its new approach. The familiar consumer-goods strategy builds brand identities that not only depend on the technical or functional assets of the product, but also create an emotional benefit or connection with consumers...The word Merck uses—“lovebrand”—is associated with...Kevin Roberts, who wrote the book Lovemarks about the ways brands can transcend even loyal consumer status to become loved by people...Merck uses the strategy across all six global consumer brands and also its five or six regional brands...and is looking at how to use it with its local brands. The consumer-driven strategy hasn't been picked up by Merck’s pharma prescription drugs as of yet...The Merck consumer brands under the long-term strategy have “grown significantly in the past two to three years," and consumer perception, attitudes and awareness of the brands have also been increasing…The consumer-style brand strategy isn't meant to take away from the products' technical or scientific strength...We take our strong scientific and medical expertise and add that (lovebrand) component on top and that makes us stronger...