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There’s some bad news in our latest exclusive annual analysis of pharmacist salaries, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recently released Occupational Employment Statistics...In 2015, the average gross base salary for a pharmacist at a retail, mail, and specialty pharmacy was $119,517—up a paltry 0.1% from 2014. Retail employment grew slowly, with slightly fewer pharmacists working at drugstores and mass merchants...Meanwhile, employment at mail pharmacies and hospitals grew. Pharmacists who work at hospitals also got some good paycheck news: Their salaries rose by 1.6%. The share of pharmacists who work at hospitals grew, too...The pharmacy industry’s ongoing shift from traditional to specialty drugs is altering long-standing pharmacist employment patterns…

Here are my observations about 2015 trends:

• Mass merchants still ahead.
• Mail employment rose sharply.
• Hospital employment keeps growing.
• Pharmacist salaries exceeded those of other healthcare workers, but growth lagged in 2015.

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

There is a high rate of prescription pain reliever abuse in Europe, largely accounted by opioids, according to the first comparative study of prescription drug abuse in the European Union, which was conducted by researchers at RTI International....The study investigated nonmedical prescription drug use in five European countries – Denmark, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom...For certain classes of medications, like opioids, we found a significant rate of prescription pain reliever abuse in the EU...While the lifetime rates were not as high as in the U.S. – 20 percent for those aged 12 years and over, compared to between 7 percent and 13 percent in the EU – the past-year rates were only slightly lower. This suggests that the EU may be catching up to the United States for some substances...Previously, it was thought that the prescription drug epidemic was limited to the United States...but this study shows that the epidemic extends well beyond the U.S...Identification of the scope and prevalence of nonmedical prescription drug use in the EU is an important first step in building a worldwide system that can be used to monitor trends, track risk and protective factors and to develop targeted interventions aimed at reducing the risk of nonmedical prescription drug use...

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.

If you ask a life sciences chief executive to gaze into a crystal ball, he or she will tell you there is good reason to be optimistic about the future. Or so a new survey would have us believe....All 38 executives who participated in the survey reported that they are confident about what lies ahead; 79 percent are convinced their products will remain relevant for the next few years; and 97 percent are certain that they are staying on top of coming trends...What might explain such a bullish view of the world? Well, chief executives...by their very nature, tend to be optimistic people and the industry is coming to terms with its challenges...This may be a case, however, of seeing the world through the proverbial rose-colored glasses...Why? At the same time these chief executives are so upbeat, a whopping 89 percent also confessed they are concerned they will not be able to increase market share. And 74 percent expect top-line growth of between just 2 percent and 4 percent over the next three years...We wonder if their investors know how they feel about such prospects.

Stretchy electronics offer wearable health gadgets without batteries...Picture a health-monitoring patch you wear like a tattoo and that doesn’t need a battery...That’s the idea behind a demonstration by John Rogers, a stretchable electronics pioneer at the University of Illinois...whose lab created a stretchy skin patch that uses light pulses to monitor heart rate or sun exposure...it’s powered by a cell phone...with a near-field communications chip, the kind that’s used in apps like Apple Pay or for sharing photos between phones. That is, radio signals from a phone actually power the device and let it transmit information...Rogers says it means health-monitoring gadgets could be cheaper, smaller, and more lightweight than ever before...new device also measures heart rate and blood oxygenation using four LEDs to shine different colors of light into the skin. Changes to the color of the reflected light is picked up by photodetectors. A person’s heart rate is displayed as a flashing light.

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

Many medications are broken down before making it to the bloodstream, preventing their arrival at the site of infection, but researchers think they've found a way to improve drug delivery by bypassing certain bodily processes...Researchers...have created a method of delivering drugs using the lymphatic system in order to bypass the liver and create a route directly to the bloodstream, increasing the amount of a substance making it to target areas...The advantage of our system is that drugs are shielded from degradation in the liver but are ultimately released when they reach their site of action, ensuring that the drug given to the patient goes where it is supposed to...researchers created a technology to modify drugs so they mimic dietary lipids, which are absorbed into the lymph system -- unlike other nutrients...No matter how good the drug is, it needs to be absorbed [into the bloodstream] and to avoid this first pass metabolism in order to get to the general circulation where it acts...

Arizona-based health services operator Banner Health said...that it was the victim of a cyberattack potentially affecting about 3.7 million patients, physicians, health plan members and others across seven states...The organization, which operates a community hospital in Fallon and facilities in Fernley, did not confirm whether any Nevada patients’ information was compromised in the attack...Jennifer Ruble said she didn’t yet have data on the number of people affected in each of the seven states in which the health system operates...The nonprofit system is mailing letters to possibly affected individuals, has contacted law enforcement and has taken actions to block cyberattackers, according to a statement...