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The partners will develop a comprehensive diabetes platform and combine software, devices, medicine and professional care to improve diabetes management for patients...Verily Life Sciences, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet and Sanofi, a French multinational pharmaceutical company launched Onduo - a joint venture to improve diabetes care...The collaboration will leverage Verily’s miniaturized electronics, analytics and consumer software with Sanofi’s clinical expertise to create innovative treatments for diabetes patients…Onduo is designed to...help people with diabetes live full, healthy lives by developing comprehensive solutions that combine devices, software, medicine and professional care to enable simple and intelligent disease management...

... cells generally like having company, forming communities with other cell types to make complete tissues. However, quite often, researchers isolate cells from their 3-D environments, creating 2-D models that don’t always replicate complex biology...But now, an entire industry is emerging to recapitulate various tissues more realistically. 3-D bioprinting has the capacity to layer different cell types, creating more biologically accurate liver, kidney, skin and even tumor tissues. The hope is that more lifelike tissues will produce better scientific results...Organovo is the leader in 3-D bioprinting...The...company has been selling 3-D liver tissue to pharma companies for about 18 months and is about to expand into kidney tissue. The goal is to support drug development by using these 3-D models to gauge toxicity...Kidney and liver toxicology studies are required for every product before it goes into humans....The high costs of clinical trials could eventually make this a go-to technology for pharma and biotech, providing better data to spot toxicity early and avoid costly mistakes…

...the HPV vaccine is still a hard sell...A new study (funded by Merck, which sells the Gardasil HPV vaccine) finds that only 21 percent of parents believe that a law requiring vaccination for attending school is a good idea, and 54 percent disagreed with the notion of such a requirement for school entry altogether. What might make them change their minds? Well, 57 percent reported that they could live with the requirement, but only if there is an opt-out provision... the vaccines have been plagued by numerous reports of side effects. The issue prompted European regulators to investigate although they did not find evidence the vaccines cause chronic pain or dizziness. Earlier this month, meanwhile, 63 young women in Japan filed a class-action lawsuit seeking $9 million in compensation from the central government and the manufacturers over side effects, pain in various parts of their bodies, difficulty walking, and impaired eyesight…

Justin Gallagher, associate publisher of The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network.

EpiPens just aren’t that great...They’re reliable, sure. They’ll buy a patient who’s in the midst of a severe allergic reaction a few crucial minutes to make his way to the hospital...But they’re also bulky. Their epinephrine solution isn’t particularly shelf-stable, and will easily degrade in temperatures that are too low or too high. They expire after about a year. And they’re not so user-friendly. Though EpiPens come with a practice kit, users in the midst of an allergy attack have mistaken which end’s the pointy end — and stabbed their thumbs instead of their thighs...But critics say Mylan has little incentive to improve EpiPens: “If you’re the monopolist, and you’ve got a product that expires every year, and it’s not super easy to carry around so the safest thing to do is have several tucked away in different places — I don’t see why there would be any pressure to innovate...Competitors have tried to make runs at the EpiPen...But it’s unclear if anything can displace the familiar auto-injector with the bright orange cap...Here’s why:

1. Mylan has patent protection that lasts through 2025
2. There’s no room for error when you’re treating anaphylaxis
3. It doesn’t take an auto-injector to get epinephrine into the body — but it sure helps
4. The regulatory process is slow and expensive
5. The public hasn’t spoken (loud enough)

Paul LeVine, vice president of Analytic Services at TrialCard, discusses how specialty pharmacies can best utilize data to improve patient outcomes.

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

Justin Gallagher, associate publisher of 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.

The notorious virus is running rampant through global phishing campaigns to a wide range of industries, but U.S. healthcare is ground zero...Locky ransomware is back in the spotlight...the virus has evolved and is targeting hospitals with a massive campaign...The ransomware strain – first observed by security researchers in February this year – began as a straight-forward virus sent in an email attachment disguised at a Microsoft Word invoice...This latest campaign, however, uses DOCM files (macro-enable files used in Microsoft Word) to deliver the ransomware payload...Further, these are global attacks, but the U.S. tops the list…Each email campaign has distinct ‘one-off’ codes, used to download Locky from the malware server and the malicious URL is embedded within macro code, using the same encoding function...The volume of Locky ransomware downloaders is increasing and the tools and techniques being used in campaigns are constantly changing...