Category Archives: drug wholesaling and distribution
US Pharma Spending Declines for First Time in 60 years
Despite the fact that overall healthcare spending (direct and indirect costs, revenues), are at all time highs, U.S. spending on pharmaceuticals is reaching an all time low –if you are willing to count the last 60 years an adequate measuring stick. It’s simple: the market’s acceptance of widely used, inexpensive, generic substitutes has succeeded in driving the decline. And the generic manufacturing industries’ adept maneuvering –when a big drug hits its patent cliff— is darn near optimized. Not only do employers and insurers “get it,” but according to lots of related survey data, consumers understand the drill too. “The largest [...]
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Big Pharma Preparing for a Pipeline Shopping Spree, Says GlobalData
Despite a recent fall in deal volume and overall value, some of the pharmaceutical industry’s major players are about to splash out in an effort to restock depleted drug pipelines, says an analyst with research and consulting firm GlobalData. In a new report, Adam Dion, analyst with GlobalData, states that industry leaders such as Pfizer, Merck, GSK and AstraZeneca are paying the price for failing to adequately prepare for the effects of the patent cliff. This report was built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research, and in-house analysis conducted by GlobalData’s team of industry [...]
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Adverse Effects of Hormonal Contraceptives Now On the Docket
I received a note over the weekend from Eric Burns, the immediate past president of Media Matters for America. Along with Karl Frisch, a former communications director, they launched a new company called Bullfight Strategies –and their business is good. The company was founded with a goal to empower clients “to win in the media arena.” It does so by focusing on the right kinds of rapid response narrative, fully conditioned to take advantage of what has become known as “the 15 minute news cycle.” Eric wanted to make sure that Healthcare Matters’ readers were aware of the latest developments [...]
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UPS Laser-Focused on Healthcare Supply Chain –Investors Already Seeing the Pay Off
In case you haven’t heard, UPS is making it crystal clear that it intends to dominate in the healthcare marketplace. It’s a $50 billion global market and when you consider the down turn in traditional business demand for overnight shipping services, both UPS and FedEx have set their sights on a marketplace –the medical cargo marketplace—that is projected to grow at a rate of 20% annually. “Both companies have more than doubled their dedicated health-care storage and handling space in the past five years to take advantage of a business with potential operating margins of 15 percent or higher, dwarfing [...]
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ViiV Healthcare, Medicines Patent Pool — Big Pharma Can’t Buy Better Public Relations
GlaxoSmithKline’s HIV/AIDS drugs business is demonstrating some nice character. Their words and actions support a design to share intellectual property rights on children’s medicine in a patent pool designed to make treatments more widely available in poor countries. ViiV Healthcare, majority-owned by GSK, is the second research-based pharmaceutical business to sign up to the new Medicines Patent Pool, following a lead set in 2011 by Gilead Sciences. The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), launched in 2010 by the UNITAID health financing system that is funded by a levy on airline tickets, aims to address the remaining gap by getting patent holders [...]
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Cardinal To Acquire AssuraMed, Direct-To-Home Distributor for $2.07B
Late last week, Cardinal Health announced plans to acquire privately held AssuraMed, another Ohio-based healthcare concern and leading provider of medical supplies to chronically ill patients in the home. The price? $2.07 billion. The acquisition will be financed with a combination of $1.3 billion in new senior unsecured notes and the remainder in cash. The deal is expected to close by early April this year. “AssuraMed is a natural extension of the Cardinal Health businesses and of our mission to be essential to care. The acquisition of this industry leader allows us to serve the growing number of Americans treated in [...]
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Latest Gold Rush –Airline/Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Market
Despite a stubborn and sluggish global economy, the pharmaceutical industry is booming. Surging demand for increasingly complex drugs and pharmaceutical products –in all corners of the earth– has industry analysts sizing the market at U.S. $900 billion by 2012 and $1.2 trillion by 2014. The cold chain-equipped carriers are smiling. All in all, the market for cold chain services is projected to reach $7.6 billion by 2013. What’s driving it? The Pharmaceuticals. The majority of biotech products require refrigerated (2–8°C) storage and transportation, as do most vaccines, blood products and other injectables. Meanwhile, regulatory requirements for what has traditionally been [...]
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NECC’s Demise: A Tragedy of “Failed Organizational Ethics”
It’s been three months since the deadly outbreak of fungal meningitis began. And yesterday, the New England Compounding Center (NECC), the compounding pharmacy that produced the contaminated medicines, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It’s highly doubtful that NECC has enough assets to adequately compensate its victims, including the thousands of people who were exposed, the 620 who fell ill, and the 39 who died, but one thing is for sure, the lawyers will be turning over a lot of rocks in their quest for settlement money. For example and according to Alyson Oliver, a Michigan attorney representing victims, the fatal [...]
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Prescription Drug Overdose Epidemic: Simple Solutions Being Ignored
If you’re a primary care physician who writes thousands of opiate prescriptions preferred by addicts, chances are, you’re not on the up and up. And remarkably, solutions for monitoring such rogue behavior already exist, but only a hand full of states actually use them. Prescription overdoses have fueled a doubling of U.S. drug fatalities in the last decade. So a recent LA Times story revealing that California’s system for detecting signs of excessive prescribing of narcotics, called CURES, was cut from Governor Brown’s budget, has proven itself to be a tough pill for taxpayers to swallow. There’s nothing new about [...]
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Allscripts Cleans House: Cerner’s Paul Black Replaces Tullman, Shapiro, etc.
With high profile deals going to competitors and the company’s stock in a serious slump, Allscripts must have been a tough place to work lately. Its failure to hit financial projections in April led to the firing of its board chairman Philip Pead, the resignations of three other board members and a quick exit for the company’s CFO William Davis. And now, the rest of its C-Suite has been put out of its misery. Paul Black, a former COO of Cerner Corporation is replacing Glen Tullman, who is stepping down as Allscripts CEO. Black, 54, who retired from Cerner back [...]
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GPOs –like Premier– Driving Solutions to Eliminate Drug Shortages
Several months ago, President Obama signed an executive order that required the FDA to take more action to help alleviate drug shortages by more comprehensive reporting, expediting regulatory reviews, and monitoring the behavior of manufacturers and distributors to prevent stockpiling or price gouging of scarce medications. In a separate letter to drug manufacturers, President Obama reminded them of their legal responsibilities and prodded them to work more effectively to share information in advance of a shortage. Not too long afterwards, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) proposed a new, unprecedented multi-stakeholder initiative designed to accelerate the recovery of critical drugs in [...]
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Time Definite Logistics –MNX Expands Global Network and Adds Track & Trace
After writing about the major and strategic moves that 3PLs and 4PL service-providers are making into the healthcare sector, I have received several letters and press announcements from a number of those companies. It’s not just an indication of the sector’s increasing appetite for the healthcare supply chain, but an obvious sign of the growing demand that the healthcare sector has for more and customized levels of logistics service –whether it knows it or not. Formerly known as Midnite Express, MNX is one example of a 3PL hungry to establish a strong business presence in healthcare. The company offers services [...]
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3PLs Moving Into Healthcare Supply Chain –Low Hanging Fruit for All
Third-party logistics firms (3PLs) are essentially travel agents for freight. They generally do not own transportation equipment, but instead buy capacity from the carriers who do –the truckers, railroads, steamship lines, or cargo airlines, and then mark it up and resell it to the shippers. The cost of purchased transportation is highly variable for 3PLs because they primarily buy capacity in the spot market. As a result, in periods of macroeconomic weakness when capacity loosens and carrier pricing falls, 3PLs can pass those declines to shippers on a lag, thereby expanding their gross margins. Despite how robust the 3PL business [...]
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Standards for Drug Quality Assurance & Regulatory Enforcement Should Be Consolidated
You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the New England Compounding Center (NECC), the compounding pharmacy responsible for 32 deaths so far, has been reprimanded by the FDA several times prior to this latest, highly publicized disaster. Going all the way back to 2004, the FDA conducted inspections of NECC’s facilities which resulted in the issuance of a Warning Letter citing at least three infractions. From compounding a commercially available product, to manufacturing a blend of several compounds and marketing the new product as its own, to the reckless repackaging of easily contaminated drugs into syringes (sound familiar?), the company [...]
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GHX Testing its “Track & Trace” Solutions in Pharma Applications
Is doing the right thing its own reward? GHX has been on a mission to improve transparency and efficiency in the healthcare supply chain. And as we’ve reported here numerous times, not just GHX, but all of the industry’s thought leadership and most all of the industry’s major supply chain “players” want the same thing. Along with the term “transparency,” we throw around the enabling concepts like “track and trace,” which leads to discussion about UDI and the various implementation standards being debated. And most recently, those conversations question the FDA’s lack of urgency, especially when considering that virtually no [...]
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Meningitis Outbreak Leading to Second Condition –Epidural Abscesses
People recovering from a meningitis outbreak caused by a contaminated steroid drug have been struck by a second illness, officials say. The new problem, called an epidural abscess, was caused by the same steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, which was injected into patients to treat back or neck pain. Epidural abscesses are a localized infection affecting the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. They are forming in patients who received the contaminated injections, putting them back in the hospital for more treatment, often requiring surgery. “We’re hearing about it in Michigan and other locations as well,” said Dr. Tom M. Chiller, [...]
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- Healthcare in the Cloud: Forecast Still Hazy : HIMSS 2013: Top Takeaways Gathering Clouds said: [...] to David McCament’s mind, the future of healthcare cloud is not so clear. In a gue... more
- Time Definite Logistics –MNX Expands Global Network and Adds Track & Trace : Daniel said: Everything is very open with a precise description of the issues. It was definitely inform... more
- Varian Runs a “Clinic” in Effective Lobbying –Harry Reid Rides Shotgun : Thomas Finn said: Thanks for your comment Bo. I do not fully comprehend the differences between the two opti... more
- Varian Runs a “Clinic” in Effective Lobbying –Harry Reid Rides Shotgun : Barton 'Bo' Cooke said: Tom, you nailed it. This rider, put in at the last minute and was rushed into the Congres... more
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