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European drugmakers Roche, Bayer and Merck KGaA became the latest companies to freeze prices in the United States for the rest of 2018 following criticism by President Donald Trump over the cost of medicine...Roche did boost U.S. prices for nine key drugs by an average of 3 percent on July 1, but said it would hold off additional increases as discussions with the Trump administration continue over a longer-term solution to containing healthcare costs...The European announcements on Friday follow similar moves from Novartis, Pfizer and U.S. drugmaker Merck.

The upcoming serialization requirements in the European Union and the United States have presented pharmaceutical companies with the challenge of balancing data integrity with performance when designing the appropriate information architecture...The pharma sector is currently undergoing the process of introducing new systems and processes for serialization...Companies offering networks for the storing and sharing of vast amounts of serialization data are challenged with creating a shareable world that is also scalable. For pharmaceutical companies, serialization will require a paradigm shift in IT architecture to deal with the combination of the vast amount of data stored within network databases and the operational processes associated with the upcoming requirements...In an industry as highly regulated and safety critical as the pharmaceutical sector, the integrity of the real world must meet the volume and performance of the virtual world. Cloud networks for serialization must offer security, together with speed and scalability especially with the introduction of new drug traceability requirements across the globe...

The United States and other countries will continue to spend more on specialty medications, and less will be spent on brand-name drugs...spending on drugs in the U.S. will grow at a much slower rate, according to the Quintiles IMS Institute report, "Outlook for Global Medicines Through 2021: Balancing Cost and Value."...

1. THE GROWTH RATE for U.S. spending on medicines will decline by half, from 12% in 2015 to between 6% and 7% in 2017. Plus, prescription drug spending is forecast to grow between 6% and 9% through 2021…
2. U.S. BRAND DRUG PRICES will increase at a slower rate, due both to competition from generics and Congressional backlash over soaring brand prices...Brand prices will increase at 8% to 11% — more slowly than the 12% to 15% in the past three years….
3. SPECIALTY MEDICINES will lift the share of global heathcare spending from 30% in 2016 to 35% in 2021, driven by the adoption of new breakthrough medicines...
4. PATIENT OUT-OF-POCKET COSTS are forecast to decline, despite rising brand prescription costs, as patients shift to newly available generics and receive co-pay assistance for brands…
5. SEVERAL NEW THERAPIES are moving through the registration process around the world and are expected to come to market soon. In the anti-infectives and antivirals category, new treatments for HIV, bacterial disease, anthrax, hepatitis C, and malaria will be launched...

Health officials say a disease believed to have caused a major increase in birth defects among Brazilian-born babies is unlikely to flourish in Nevada, though travelers could bring it to the state...As of Thursday, 31 cases of Zika virus disease have been confirmed in the United States, but all are related to travel outside of the country, Southern Nevada Health District Disease Investigation and Intervention Specialist Tony Fredrick said. There are no known cases in Nevada...Travel could bring infected people from these regions to the Silver State, said James M. Wilson, director of the Nevada State Infectious Disease Forecast Station at the University of Nevada, Reno...Trapping efforts in Southern Nevada have not shown any sign of the Aedes species of mosquito, which is believed to have been the primary cause of most recent infections...

Cut-price copies of an expensive Roche biotech drug for blood cancer have taken 80 percent of the British market since launching last year, saving the healthcare system $113 million a year...The rapid adoption of two so-called biosimilar forms of rituximab from Celltrion and Novartis has been accompanied by discounts of 50 to 60 percent as the National Health Service has used tenders to bring down costs...The situation contrasts sharply with the United States, where regulators have lagged Europe in approving biosimilars while a complex system of rebates offered to insurers by original-brand drugmakers has created barriers to use...The U.S. logjam prompted Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb to complain of "rebating mischief" and a "rigged payment scheme"...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday he has asked the United Nations to help the South American nation alleviate medicine shortages, which have become increasingly severe as the oil-producing nation's economic crisis accelerates...Triple digit inflation and a decaying socialist economic model have left medications ranging from simple anti-inflammatory drugs to chemotherapy medication out of reach for most Venezuelans...The Venezuelan Pharmaceuticals Federation estimates some 85 percent of drugs are unavailable to the country's citizens...Maduro often blames the deteriorating economy and widespread shortages of goods on an "economic war" led by opposition politicians with the help of the United States...Critics say the problems are the result of dysfunctional price and currency controls that have decimated private industry.

Merck & Co said it agreed to enter into a settlement and license agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Ono Pharmaceutical Co Ltd to resolve all global patent-infringement litigation related to its cancer drug, Keytruda...Merck will make an initial payment of $625 million to Bristol and Japan's Ono. The company will also pay a 6.5 percent royalty rate on Keytruda sales from January 2017 to December 2023, and a 2.5 percent rate for the subsequent three years...Bristol will get 75 percent of the royalties and Ono will get the rest.

Pfizer has won a first approval for OTC Viagra. Viagra Connect, the Pfizer OTC name for its blockbuster erectile dysfunction drug, has been approved for sale in the U.K...The Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency announced...that it will reclassify the 50 mg dose from prescription only to a pharmacy medicine in the U.K. Viagra Connect is expected to be available for sale in the spring of 2018. Anyone seeking to buy the drug will be required to have a discussion with a pharmacist, who will determine whether the drug is appropriate for their use...It will continue to sell branded versions of other doses of the drug in the U.K...In regard to its U.S. OTC ambitions, Pfizer said, in a statement to FiercePharma, “While we do not have information to share on specific Rx to OTC switch programs in the United States, generally we consider prescription drugs—both within the Pfizer portfolio and outside it—for potential switch to non-prescription status. Our objective is to provide consumers with significantly greater access to medicines with well-established efficacy and safety profiles without a prescription.”

Pharmacy managers and pharmacists both landed in the top five of Glassdoor's annual list of the best-paying jobs in the United States. Glassdoor...noted health care jobs showed up in four of the top five spots. For the third year in a row, "physician" took the top slot, with a median base salary of $187,876...Pharmacy managers ($149,064) and pharmacists ($125,847) were listed at number two and number five, respectively. "Medical science liaisons" ($132,842)—specialists who work for pharmaceutical or biotech companies to establish relationships with medical experts—came in at number four.

Global pressure on health spending is forcing the $1 trillion-a-year pharmaceutical industry to look for new ways to price its products: charging based on how much they improve patients' health, rather than how many pills or vials are sold...In the United States, both parties are promising fresh action on drug prices whoever wins the White House. In Europe, economies are stalled, squeezing state health budgets. And in China and other Asian markets, governments are getting tougher with suppliers...Pricing drugs based on clinical outcomes is one way to ensure that limited funds bring the most benefits to patients now and pay for the most promising medical advances in future. Some experiments in pricing have already been made...shifting the overall industry to a new model requires improvements in data collection and a change in thinking...The aim is a flexible pricing system that rebates healthcare providers when a drug doesn’t work as planned and charges more when it works well...