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Food and Drug Administration has approved the first three-dimensional printed oral drug product, Spritam (levetiracetam), from Aprecia Pharmaceuticals,…indicated as adjunctive therapy for partial-onset seizures, myoclonic seizures, and primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures in adults and children with epilepsy…was developed with Aprecia's proprietary ZipDose technology, which uses three-dimensional printing to create a porous formulation...that disintegrates rapidly...

National Association of Chain Drug Stores commented this week on the proposed regulations on the use of managed care in Medicaid and in the Children’s Health Insurance Program… create standards that will serve to maintain the strong link between Medicaid patients and community pharmacies and the valuable services that these pharmacies provide… six key areas:

1. Outpatient Drugs…preventing mandatory use of mail-order pharmacies,…preventing a reliance on closed networks for…specialty medications
2. Network Adequacy and Availability of Services – advancing the belief that "patients should be allowed the freedom to select a pharmacy that best fits their personal health needs
3. Program Integrity and Auditing – recognizing the "balance between the need to ensure integrity in the Medicaid program and the need to afford due process and equal protection to providers"
4. Medical Loss Ratio – allowing medication therapy management services to be considered as a healthcare activity, rather than an administrative cost
5. Provider Payment Initiatives – incorporating innovative pharmacy services as part of managed care organizations’ strategies for delivering healthcare services
6. Development of a Medicaid Managed Care Quality Rating System – including appropriate medication-use metrics

RediClinic announced…donations totaling $40,000 to eight YMCAs serving the greater Baltimore/Washington D.C., Philadelphia and Seattle areas. RediClinic,.. is making the donation as part of its continued commitment to the health and well-being of the communities they serve… Each YMCA will use the donation to support various programs that will benefit the…children in its communities..

computer system, including the electronic health record platform, at a 13-hospital health system went black this week, resulting in a 20-hour long outage….BJC HealthCare, in St. Louis,..reported a computer outage … All IT systems went dark, "including clinical, revenue cycle, e-mail, word programs and other applications…$7,900 per minute of outage time...

National Association of Boards of Pharmacy …released a progress report urging state and federal regulation for the thousands of websites that illegally distribute medications…These websites can place consumers at risk by distributing dangerous counterfeit drugs,…report recommends that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and domain name registrars closely monitor and shut down illegal websites.

new consumer diagnostics tool called BodiMetrics that tracks six health metrics plus a medication reminder…."It's an all-in-one device." …track include an EKG, pulse rate, blood oxygenation, systolic blood pressure and temperature…to have Food and Drug Administration approval for a device designed to enhance in-office, or in-clinic, diagnostics that includes a metric for sleep apnea.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd…. announced that it will buy a 51% equity share of Immuneering Corp., a genomic-analysis company… uses "advanced proprietary techniques" to research genetic, genomic and proteomic data,… will be closer to helping match the right patient to the right medicine at the right time,…

Chinese police are investigating if two distillers…added…Viagra to their liquor in the latest food-safety scare in China… Liuzhou Food and Drug Administration said that it found the Guikun Alcohol Plant and the Deshun Alcohol Plant in Guangxi’s Liuzhou city were putting Sildenafil, …into three of their baijiu products.

AmerisourceBergen announced some major enhancements to its independent network… enhancements …will support the delivery … community healthcare by enabling independent pharmacists to further support patients, operate their pharmacies effectively and combat growing industry challenges surrounding reimbursement…

• new patient engagement center
• access to pre- and post-claims editing services
• expansion of its central pay capabilities with the addition of claim reconciliation services
• revamped InSite pharmacy performance tool that will now include front-of-store sales data
• new mobile application that will notify pharmacists of key information they need to manage their business

Health system pharmacy managers…got a reprieve when the Food and Drug Administration moved the deadline for compliance with the Drug Supply Chain Security Act to November 1, 2015… outlines critical steps to build an electronic, interoperable system to identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed.. dispensers have to maintain tracing files – a document for every purchase transaction…