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Big Pharma, out today on PC, Mac and Linux, is a fascinating look at the complicated and often dark world of drug development. Right now there's a counter on the game's official website (it counts profits made, comas caused, patents infringed and clinical trials buried) that starkly illustrates the factors that come into play when profit and competition is involved in the business of curing disease.

“Biosimilars will do for the biotech market, primarily made up of very expensive injectable drugs, what generic drugs did for traditional oral solid pills a decade ago: lower the cost for safe, effective treatments that improve and save lives,”… “They will revolutionize the category of spending that is among the fastest-growing and most worrisome for payers who want to continue providing sustainable, high-quality benefits for their members.”

William Rogers, MD, director of the Physicians Regulatory Issues Team at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will act as ICD-10 ombudsman to the federal agency, He will work out of an ICD-10 coordination center in Baltimore.. Implementation of ICD-10 is only 34 days away… CMS has said it will not deny claims as long as the right code family is used, the agency will not send back a message if the wrong code is used.

After Regeneron and Sanofi got FDA approval for their cholesterol drug last month, today is Amgen's turn. CNBC's Meg Tirrell reports. (video)

Pfizer has no problem keeping sales for Viagra flying high in China,… But the company has gotten in hot water for its efforts, as Chinese marketing authorities slapped Pfizer with a fine for paying local drugstores to promote its blockbuster ED med. Pfizer inked deals with four Shanghai pharmacies to display the drug… violating China's drug management rules...

'Throwing out the prescription pad' is key to preventing fraud and abuse..With e-prescribing of controlled substances now legal nationwide, providers and pharmacies are empowered with a new technological tool in the fight against prescription painkillers… there's some progress yet to be made on this front. NLR(National Law Review) points to statistics that show that while… one-third of pharmacies were equipped to handle eRx of controlled substances as of the end of 2013, just 1 percent of prescribers were able to do so.

Ashley Talamo, Publisher: Pharmacy Times...(PTNN) This weekly video program highlights the latest in pharmacy news, product news, and more. (video)

Treatment has complementary actions that help control blood glucose. A new type 2 diabetes treatment for adult patients, empagliflozin and metformin (Synjardy), was approved by the FDA…(from Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly)… is indicated as an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults with T2D. The 2 medicines…have complementary actions that help control blood glucose,…Empagliflozin removes excess glucose through urine by blocking glucose reabsorption in the kidney, while metformin lowers glucose production by the liver and absorption in the intestine,…

A 12-hospital health system is notifying hundreds of its current and former patients that their protected health information has been compromised after discovering an employee was involved in identity theft…Merit Health system based in Jackson, Miss., only learned of the breach after local law enforcement notified them that one of their employees…was under investigation for identity theft,..The employee was allegedly swiping patient files for more than a year undetected,..swiped records containing patient names, Social Security numbers, medical diagnoses data, health plan data and also payment information.

Amgen has won federal approval for the second medicine in a new class of pricey biotech drugs that reduce artery-clogging cholesterol more than older statin drugs that have been used for decades…Repatha (evolocumab) could eventually help millions of Americans who face increased risks of heart disease because they cannot control their cholesterol with existing drugs and methods. .. medication's price tag—$14,100 per year

—patients with extremely high levels of LDL, or bad cholesterol, due to inherited conditions

—patients with persistently high LDL levels and a history of heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular problems

….designed to be self-injected on a monthly or bi-monthly dosing schedule.