Category:

• Darla Zarley Appointed to Board
• Does That DEA Number Really Match?
• FDA Approves Naloxone Nasal Spray to Prevent Opioid Overdose Deaths
• Selected Medication Safety Risks to Manage in 2016: 1) Patient Information – Placing Orders on the Wrong Patient’s Electronic Health Record; 2) Communication About Drug Therapy – Confusing the Available Concentration as the Patient’s
• Dose on Electronic Records
• FDA Provides Training Videos on MedWatch Resources and Breakthrough Therapy
• Reading Medicine Labels Helps Reduce Acetaminophen Overdoses
• Over-the-Counter Children’s Medicine
• Recalled Due to Incorrect Dose Markings
• FDA Offers Webinars on Online Drug Information Resources for Students and Clinicians
• Eye-Opening NTSB Analysis

A new algorithm may take the guesswork out of medicating patients with cancer, bacterial infections, organ transplants, and other conditions that require very precise drug dosing...Individual differences can alter patient response to medications...Metabolism, body type, ethnicity, other illnesses, and genetics can play a role in how patients respond to drug treatment...The researchers call their method parabolic personalized dosing, or PPD. They gave patients medication and then observed the dosages which brought positive responses...the dosage could be reduced or increased based on how much medication was in the patient’s blood, with the successful doses added to the parabola. The researchers called the parabola "a robust map that identifies drug doses (inputs) that ensure that a patient will stay in a target range."...Establishing a patient’s parabola still requires administering drugs and then observing the response, something doctors already do. "This allows us to make a better guess,"...In the age of big data, algorithms could play a helpful role in integrating a lot of patient information to make dosing decisions.

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.

Jean Coutu Group has introduced an image transmission service for new prescriptions that’s designed to make it easier for patients to fill medications...The Canadian drug chain said...that the new service is accessed via the Jean Coutu mobile application. To use the service, patients open their Health Record in the app and then take a photo of their prescription. The image is then sent directly to their Jean Coutu pharmacy. When the medication is ready for pickup, the pharmacy sends a text message to the patient...the image transmission service is a time-saver for both patients and their pharmacists. Prescriptions can be sent to the pharmacy as soon as patients get them from their doctors, and pharmacists can prepare the medications in advance...Besides the new prescription image transmission service, the Health Record also enables users to complete a simultaneous request for prescription renewals for one or more family members; receive an "it’s ready" notification via email or text when prescriptions are available for pickup...and scan a prescription label to request a refill.

Walgreens Boots Alliance reported improving profits as it cuts costs in its U.S. pharmacy business ahead of its Rite Aid acquisition that executives expect to close in the second half of this year. Walgreens growth continues to be hampered by slowing U.S. retail pharmacy sales due in part to reimbursement pressures and a weaker-than-expected flu season with far fewer reported cases across the country. Walgreen U.S. pharmacy sales, which account for 65% of the U.S. division sales, were up just 3.2% in the company’s second quarter...compared to the year-ago period...Walgreens still reported a 14.4% increase in net earnings as the company continued to cut costs and improve margins amid the ongoing integration with Alliance Boots. Total sales were up 13.6% to $30.2 billion, "largely due to the full consolidation of Alliance Boots."...Walgreens executives say they continue their "integration planning," assuming the Rite Aid deal will close in the "second half of calendar 2016."

Michael Cawley, BS, PharmD, RRT, CPFT, FCCM, professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of the Sciences, discusses why it is important that patients know which medication they should use in a particular situation.

A new app may help streamline medication needs for travelers...International travel is increasingly more common, but many travelers are often ill prepared for dealing with health issues while abroad...French pharmacist...developed a new app to help...travelers with essential medication information...The "Convert Drugs Premium" app allows users to find information in 11 different languages for therapeutically equivalent medications in 220 countries...Convert Drugs Premium promises that health care professionals who use it will "be able to quickly help visitors from other countries find the medications they need, or help advise domestic patients about the products they will and will not be able to find in the country they plan to travel in."

Doctors are wildly overdiagnosing asthma, dispensing steroid inhalers like lollipops and possibly putting kids at risk...the prevalence of asthma more than doubled from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, and has stayed around a historical high of 8.3 percent of children and 7 percent of adults... Trouble is, the wrong people are being told they have asthma...So-called cough variant asthma, whose only symptom is a chronic cough, is especially likely to be overdiagnosed...reason for concern about overdiagnosing asthma is that inhaled corticosteroids — the ubiquitous puffers — can have side effects...the diagnosis of asthma has been trivialized, and inhalers [are] dispensed for no good reason … [becoming] almost a fashion accessory."... gold-standard pulmonary tests keep finding that many people diagnosed with asthma don’t have it...The percentage of children falsely labeled asthmatic can be as high as 90 percent...There is strong evidence, from several countries and different age groups, that a large fraction of people who are diagnosed with asthma do not have it.

We interview Jerry Fahrni Pharmacy Infomatics consultant about his blog post from January 27, 2016 titled: "Integration no longer optional for pharmacy technology" (podcast 28:03 min)

The rising cost of medicines has prompted yet another large group of physicians to speak out...The American College of Physicians, the largest medical society in the country, is calling for a set of familiar yet controversial actions to curb price hikes and improve patient access...For instance...believes that Americans should be allowed to import medicines from other countries...believes that drug makers should disclose their actual production costs, including research and development, used to set to pricing...Other ideas include allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug makers and expanding the mandate of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute...so that it can legally use a tool to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of medicines...The pharmaceutical industry regularly maintains that pricing funds needed investment and has previously argued against some of the proposals...Drug makers...maintain that importation would make it easier for counterfeit medicines to creep into the supply chain. Requiring companies to disclose R&D costs for each drug can be difficult to separate while such efforts overlook the role played by insurers and pharmacy benefit managers in setting prices...