Pharma Europe

Prescription Drugs: To Import or Not to Import?

2020-02-28T14:59:27+00:00July 12th, 2016|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , |

Do cheaper, imported drugs really save money – or just compromise safety? 50 million Americans did not fill a prescription in 2012 because of its cost, a Commonwealth Fund report revealed.[1] Now, prescription costs are under the political spotlight again, with US presidential candidates Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders all commenting on the issue. Speaking out against current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laws that state it is [...]

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NHS England Overhauls Access to Cancer Treatments

2020-02-28T15:00:51+00:00June 30th, 2016|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , |

Patients in England could have faster access to effective cancer treatments through the reincarnated Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has announced. The new fund will replace the existing – and greatly overspent – service, which provides access to cancer drugs that are not routinely available at the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Its costs rose to £340 million between 2015 [...]

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British Pharma Industry Faces Challenges Post-Brexit

2020-02-28T15:02:28+00:00February 12th, 2016|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , |

The British pharmaceutical industry is facing new challenges following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, a white paper has revealed. Published by Global Data, it warned of wide-reaching impacts. 51% of Britain’s medicinal and pharmaceutical products are exported to the European Union (EU). But in June, a referendum indicated the UK should leave the EU – the so-called “Brexit”. While Big Pharma companies emerged from the vote largely [...]

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Drug Development Clinical Trial Data – Public or Private?

2020-02-28T15:04:04+00:00January 23rd, 2014|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , |

In the past, data from clinical trials of new drugs and medical devices have been the property of the companies that designed them, and they were allowed to control how and what data was released. The FDA and international equivalents research new products before granting approval, so data the company generated during drug development was up to the company to disseminate as it wished. Now, with the widely held perception that [...]

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New Cancer Drugs Fuel Debate over Drug Testing Process

2022-05-24T14:08:49+00:00October 17th, 2013|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , |

Question: If the results of initial testing on a drug are amazing – and could mean the difference between life and death – should pharmaceutical companies be required to go through the current long and costly process of drug testing before making it available to the public?  If a drug is fine-tuned to treat a specific genetic profile, does it make sense to do randomized controlled trials, even if [...]

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Is NICE Denying Patients the Best Treatments Available Today?

2020-02-28T15:08:50+00:00October 5th, 2013|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , |

NICE’s Policies Under Fire The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), an organization given the responsibility of setting the standards for high quality healthcare in the UK, has come under fire for being too conservative and resource-intensive.  In a recent opinion piece in The Times of London, business editor Ian King cautioned that the pharmaceutical industry could abandon drug development in the UK if NICE doesn’t ease its [...]

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Molecular Testing in Trouble from Medicare. Who’s on First?

2020-02-28T16:04:34+00:00April 23rd, 2013|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , |

Only a Bureaucracy as Inefficient and Unwieldy as Medicare Could Create a Mess This Bad and Then Walk Away Whistling, Hands in Pockets I’m referring to Medicare’s decision to stop paying bills for molecular testing and other diagnostic tests that are transforming the way many life-threatening diseases are being treated.  This is a decision affecting hundreds of labs, including labs performing proprietary tests that target treatments for cancer patients [...]

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NCI Improvements: Drug Development Opportunity for Pharma and Biotech

2022-05-24T14:15:53+00:00March 27th, 2013|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , |

Three years ago the Institute of medicine declared that the nation’s cooperative group system for conducting clinical trials was so moribund as to not be an effective vehicle for the generation of scientific data in a timely fashion. In a report generated in 2010, the IOM recommended that the number of cooperative oncology groups be reduced from 10 down to 5[1], improve speed and efficacy of the trial processes [...]

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