- Microsoft, Walgreens deal brings promise of reducing healthcare costs (pharmaceutical-technology.com)
A seven-year venture between tech giant Microsoft Corp and the US pharmacy retail chain Walgreens Boots Alliance is expected to bring competition to the healthcare sector on the back of lower costs...In a deal signed recently – which will see Walgreens use Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform – the companies signalled their common ambition to take on Amazon.com Inc, another tech giant disrupting the healthcare space...Walgreens will roll out 12 new “digital health corners” for its US stores this year, which have been designed to promote the sale of health-related devices and to help patients manage chronic diseases...The deal will help Walgreens accumulate personalised data about patients’ health, which it said will allow pharmacists to give customised nutrition and wellness solutions using digital devices and apps as well as in-store expert advice...
- This Week in Managed Care: January 25, 2019 (ajmc.com)
Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network
- Study Shows Significant Number Of Antibiotic Prescriptions Are Not Necessary (techtimes.com)Appropriateness of outpatient antibiotic prescribing among privately insured US patients: ICD-10-CM based cross sectional study (bmj.com)
The world is experiencing a superbug problem: strains of bacteria are rapidly becoming resistant to modern drugs, making them harder to treat...However, a new study found that a significant number of antibiotics prescription are not appropriate. Researchers warned that their findings suggest that experts might have underestimated the rate of overprescription, which gives rise to superbugs...The analysis revealed that 23.2 percent of the prescribed antibiotics were not appropriate, 35.5 percent were potentially appropriate, and 28.5 percent were not associated with a diagnosis which might also mean that they were inappropriate...Roughly 2.2 million of the 14.6 million adults involved in the study had at least one antibiotic prescription that is unnecessary to treat their ailments...
- Study links opioid epidemic to painkiller marketing (reuters.com)Association of Pharmaceutical Industry Marketing of Opioid Products With Mortality From Opioid-Related Overdoses (jamanetwork.com)
Researchers are reporting a link between doctor-targeted marketing of opioid products and the increase in U.S. deaths from overdoses...In a county-by-county analysis, they found that when drug companies increased their opioid marketing budgets by just $5.29 per 1,000 population, the number of opioid prescriptions written by doctors went up by 82 percent and the opioid death rate was 9 percent higher a year later...“It really doesn’t take much marketing to increase the number of deaths,” lead author Dr. Scott Hadland...Jordan Trecki of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration warns that the new analysis only addresses part of the problem...“As the opioid epidemic grows, it is evolving beyond prescription medications and heroin to involve illicitly produced fentanyl, fentanyl-related substances and other opioids, either alone or in combination,”...
- More than two dozen companies required to submit reports on diabetes drug costs have not complied (thenevadaindependent.com)
Nearly 40 drug companies and pharmacy benefit managers submitted reports to the state detailing the costs associated with manufacturing and selling essential diabetes drugs by this month’s deadline, though almost as many have yet to report...27 drug companies identified as manufacturers of essential diabetes drugs have yet to report to the state. Scott Jones, manager of the Primary Care and Health Workforce Development Office, said in an email that the state will be reaching out to those companies to inform them of the law and obtain the required reports. (If they refuse, the state is allowed by law to impose a fine of $5,000 a day.)...
- U.S. insulin costs per patient nearly doubled from 2012 to 2016: study (reuters.com)
The cost of insulin for treating type 1 diabetes in the United States nearly doubled over a five-year period, underscoring a national outcry over rising drug prices...A person with type 1 diabetes incurred annual insulin costs of $5,705, on average, in 2016. The average cost was roughly half that at $2,864 per patient in 2012...the jump in spending was driven primarily by higher insulin prices overall and, to a lesser extent, a shift toward more expensive insulin products. Average daily insulin use rose only 3 percent over the same five-year period...The findings come amid new outrage over the cost of prescription drugs in the United States, the highest in the world...
- Swiss team develop ‘microswimmer’ robot to deliver drugs through the body (reuters.com)
A tiny sliver of elastic material swims along inside a narrow tube, coiling up and changing shape in response to the thickness of fluid and the contours of the tube around it as it moves towards its goal...The miniature robot - the bacteria-inspired brainchild of a team of scientists in Switzerland seeking new methods to deliver drugs to diseased tissue - is designed to wend its way through blood vessels and other systems in the body...The tiny soft microswimmer robot they have developed is a few millimeters in length and made using a folding technique similar to the Japanese art of origami, helping it adapt to the environment around it...
- January 25 Pharmacy Week in Review: Drug Marketing May be Linked to Opioid Deaths, Seasonal Flu Activity Remains Elevated (pharmacytimes.com)
Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.
- Walgreens pays $269.2 million to settle U.S. civil fraud lawsuits (reuters.com)
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc will pay $269.2 million to settle two whistleblower lawsuits accusing it of civil fraud for overbilling federal healthcare programs over a decade, the U.S. Department of Justice said...The pharmacy chain will pay $209.2 million to resolve claims it improperly billed Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs from 2006 to 2017 for hundreds of thousands of insulin pens it dispensed to patients it knew did not need them...Walgreens will also pay $60 million to resolve claims it overcharged Medicaid from 2008 to 2017 by failing to disclose and charge the discount drug prices it offered the public through its Prescription Savings Club program...Two pharmacists filed the original complaint concerning the insulin pens in July 2015. A copy of that complaint could not immediately be obtained on Tuesday...Marc Baker, who worked for Walgreens for a decade as a pharmacy manager in Florida, filed the original complaint concerning the drug price discounts in January 2012.
- Computerized method helps better protect pharma patents (news-medical.net)
Routes to making life-saving medications and other pharmaceutical compounds are among the most carefully protected trade secrets in global industry. Building on recent work programming computers to identify synthetic pathways leading to pharmaceutically complex molecules, researchers in Poland and South Korea have unveiled computerized methods to suggest only synthetic strategies that bypass patent-protected aspects of essential drugs...When we started this project, I was somewhat skeptical that the machine would find any viable synthetic alternatives--after all, these are blockbuster drugs worth gazillions of dollars, and I was sure that the respective companies had covered the patent space so densely that no loopholes remained. It turns out that the loopholes are there, and we can find new retrosynthetic pathways that circumvent the patents entirely."( Bartosz Grzybowski )...the researchers hope that their software will aid pharmaceutical companies in better protecting their intellectual property and, simultaneously, will help accelerate research and development in organic chemistry by supplying synthetic routes that differ from standard approaches.