Category:

In the fight against brain disease, the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is putting its money on the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health...The mixed martial arts organization...announced a $1 million donation over five years in support of the center's Professional Fighters Brain Health Study, which aims to understand the long-term effects of brain trauma...UFC Chief Operating Officer Ike Lawrence Epstein announced the donation....The goal of the study is not just to gather data on trauma but also to determine if brain damage can be detected early enough for intervention...CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) is a degenerative brain disease found in people who have suffered repeated head trauma..."We're really pushing all of our athletes to make sure they come to this facility and get tested and be part of this study because that's the key to all of this," Epstein said.

Physicians are worth billions of dollars to drugmakers, who see the prescription pad as a path to profits. But it’s growing harder for Big Pharma to get doctors’ appointments. Since 2010, Obamacare has slowly curbed the mass travel junkets and fancy meals that drug companies once used to sway the doctors most valuable to their efforts to sell products...Pharmaceutical companies are now searching for ways to refine their marketing efforts, to target the doctors most compatible with the medications they’re pitching. "You’re desperate for data to make those key decisions,"..."But while there’s lots of data out there, it’s really challenging to bring it together."...Zephyr Health...promising to help drugmakers identify key medical personnel and find ways to approach them…Zephyr builds digital dossiers on individual doctors. It starts with basic information on prescription patterns from data clearinghouses...Then its software...scours the Web for more details...Zephyr generates profiles that score each doctor’s influence and ability to drive sales on a scale of 1 to 10. The software’s slick, mobile-friendly interface lets a drug company search in broad or specialized disciplines and ranks each person’s influence in the chosen field. It also specifies whether a doctor appears to influence colleagues or simply writes a lot of scripts..."There’s nothing private anymore,"...While doctors may not be exactly psyched about Zephyr tracking their every move...even they should appreciate the company’s ability to narrow marketing campaigns. For a physician, "working with Pharma is akin to getting pecked to death by a flock of ducks," he says. "Do you want nine salespeople queued up to call on you?"

Mike Glaicar, Business Development: Pharmacy Times...(PTNN)...This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

3-D printed medicine specialist Aprecia Pharmaceuticals announced that it has completed a $35 million financing round...The move should help...Aprecia commercialize the first FDA-approved 3-D printed drug, Spritam (levetiracetam), a reformulated, easy-to-swallow med for the treatment of epilepsy. The launch is expected to occur in the first half of this year...Aprecia has exclusive rights to utilize Powder-liquid 3DP, a 3-D printing technology developed by MIT in the 1980s. The technique enables the company's ZipDose delivery platform. By printing a tablet consisting of layers of powder, Aprecia drugs can achieve a high degree of dissolvability in liquid. That means dosages as high as 1,000 mg will disintegrate in liquid...The new manufacturing methodology could also facilitate decentralized drug manufacturing and customization of medications to the needs of individual patients.

New York Giants player’s info ended up on Twitter after doctors amputated his finger...Two employees of Jackson Memorial Hospital have been fired for accessing and leaking the medical records of New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul after the football star lost part of his hand in a July 4, 2015 fireworks accident...The hospital, in its statement, said it had chosen not to comment earlier due to litigation surrounding the incident that has since been settled..."As part of our investigation into the breach, it was discovered that two employees inappropriately accessed the patient's health record. That finding resulted in the termination of both employees," officials said in the statement..."Protecting the privacy of our patients is a top priority at Jackson Health System. Any time we have allegations of a breach, we immediately and thoroughly investigate."

...Mercy Health has saved more than $42 million on drugs since 2010 by building a formulary within its electronic health record platform...The move...makes it easier for the system’s network of providers to order medications that are on its list and compliant with Mercy’s pharmaceutical contracts...It took Mercy Health’s pharmacy and therapeutics committee three years to create the formulary -- a comprehensive list of medicines that Mercy Health would prescribe...Mercy places drugs in one of four categories:

• on the formulary and available from order sets;
• on the formulary but not available from order sets;
• restricted to a specific disease state or provider type;
• neither on the formulary nor in order sets.

These categories correspond to Mercy’s “bullseye” -- a visual representation of each medication class that committee members use to review their decisions...We generate reports on non-formulary drugs -- how many times they were ordered, and what the cost savings would be if we were to use a formulary drug instead...Mercy Health now has an average formulary compliance of more than 98 percent...The formulary management is most effective with a single EHR across the health system because it enables the health system to make modifications as their contracts change and to monitor compliance...

Local nonprofit Cure 4 the Kids Foundation announced...the creation of the first outpatient palliative care clinic specifically for children in Nevada...The Pediatric Palliative Care Clinic, which is supported by Cure 4 the Kids, debuted last month in Las Vegas at the Children's Specialty Center of Nevada... Having a child with complex medical issues is often overwhelming for parents and these special kids. The palliative program will offer the child and family the support they need...It focuses on providing relief to the symptoms of serious conditions such as cancer and genetic disorders whether or not the affected person is still seeking treatment...The center's services aren't akin to immediate end-of-life care...Instead, children affected by what the center calls "life-limiting" diseases will receive care without having to be admitted to the hospital...Although the cost of care may be covered by a family's major medical benefits, the services will be provided regardless of a family's ability to pay...

...the SafeMed program, which uses certified pharmacy technicians in a novel expanded role as community health workers (CPhT-CHWs) to improve transitions of care...The SafeMed experience demonstrates that...CPhT-CHWs are well suited for novel expanded roles to improve care transitions...can play a key role in care transition programs targeting superutilizing patients with complex medical and social needs. As CMS intensifies readmission penalties and providers bearing financial risk seek to reduce overall health care costs, low-cost CPhT-CHWs serving as pharmacist extenders may become an increasingly attractive component for health systems...CPhT-CHWs can assist with identification and reporting of potential DTPs identified during home visits and telephone follow-up and can coordinate with pharmacists in real time to enable patients to get targeted MTM when and where they need it. They can also assist pharmacists in scheduling outpatient CMRs and support sessions for the patients...In collaboration with state pharmacy boards, pharmacist associations, and regional community colleges, the SafeMed model can be successfully scaled to serve superutilizing patients in readmission hotspots throughout the country.

Modern technology is now making genomic testing possible for a fraction of the time and cost..Now pharmacists and physicians can use pharmacogenomic test results to help choose safer and more effective medications for their patients...Pharmacists are undoubtedly the pharmacokinetic experts and the most educated health care providers in regard to the cytochrome P450 system. Preemptive genotyping would make a nice addition to a pharmacy’s list of service offerings and point-of-care testing panel...A clinical consultant pharmacist could use pharmacogenomic testing to guide therapy decisions and decrease drug–drug interactions. This has the potential to save countless health care dollars lost to ineffective medication use, adverse drug events, and hospital readmissions...There are also financial benefits for the testing pharmacy. Looking at pharmacogenomic testing from a medication therapy management perspective, one can imagine the usefulness of integrating genomic testing into a patient’s comprehensive medication review...to make specific evidence-based recommendations to improve patient care.

• Proven cost savings in elderly patients
• Help in predicting and preventing adverse drug reactions
• Decreased hospitalizations due to treatment failure
• Prevention of “trial-and-error” prescribing

Pharmacists are the experts on medication safety and effectiveness, and should be ready to take on the role of personalized medication consultants...Innovation is essential if pharmacy wants to act on new clinical service opportunities and earn a seat at tomorrow’s health care table. We need to be proactive in seeking out new niches...

CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing is a rapidly developing technique that is thought to provide revolutionary new ways to manipulate genes for the treatment of a number of diseases. Delivering the CRISPR therapeutic in an efficient, safe and predictable way, though, has been difficult--to this end, researchers at UMass have created a means of administering the gene editor that could help send it to clinical trials...CRISPR/Cas9 is a natural immune system in bacteria used to protect them from foreign genetic material, and scientists have used its components to cut and repair DNA sequences to replace faulty, disease-causing portions with corrected versions...The difficulty comes about in getting the separate components to the genetic material in a target cell. Previous attempts at delivering the system through disruptive, high-powered injection has caused damage to the liver...The new delivery method involves a two-part process. The researchers loaded both the CRISPR guide RNA and the DNA template into a viral vector...A week after the first injection, the scientists deliver the Cas9 messenger RNA wrapped in lipid nanoparticles...Until now it's not been possible to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 in a way that was suitable for clinical trials. By using an RNA guide and DNA repair template delivered via viral vector followed by a Cas9 in a lipid nanoparticle, we've take a huge step forward to overcoming this hurdle.