Awards…
Moderna Named Global Growth Company
Moderna Therapeutics, a company developing messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics, has been named to the World Economic Forum’s community of the fastest-growing Global Growth Companies (GGC). The GGC was formed in 2007 to engage dynamic high-growth companies with the potential to be tomorrow’s industry leaders and to become a driving force of economic and social change.
Novartis Honored as Outstanding Corporation
The World Forum for Ethics in Business (WFEB) awarded Novartis the Ethics in Business Award in the Outstanding Corporation category. This award recognizes the company’s efforts in implementing Social Ventures, and building responsibility into its business, particularly in the developing world. Novartis Social Ventures are innovative business models that build local, sustainable capabilities for healthcare around the world. In 2012, Novartis’ programs to enhance access to healthcare reached 101 million patients globally.
Ogilvy Wins Several Awards
Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide has won a Grand Global award and two Global Awards at the 2013 Global Awards. The Global Awards, in its 19th year, is an international competition that is committed to honoring excellence in healthcare communications agencies. Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide’s Ogilvy Healthworld office in Brazil won a Grand Global Award in the Consumer/Patient: Social Commitment — Integrated Campaign category. Ogilvy also won Gold and Silver trophies at the Rx Club Awards, as well as 21 Awards of Excellence. The Ogilvy Healthworld office in London took home a Gold trophy in the 2-D animation category, while the Parsippany-based team earned a silver trophy in the launch ad/campaign category.
Sagent Pharmaceuticals Given Innovation Award
Sagent Pharmaceuticals has been named one of the winners of the 12th annual Chicago Innovation Awards, which recognizes the most innovative new products or services brought to market or to public service each year. The Chicago Innovation Awards recognized Sagent for its PreventIV Measures Packaging and Labeling, which can help reduce medication errors for heparin.
INDUSTRY at Large
Merck Addresses U.S. Maternal Mortality
Merck for Mothers recently launched programs aimed at decreasing the number of women across the United States who die from or suffer severe complications related to pregnancy and childbirth.
The maternal mortality rate in this country has almost doubled since 1990, despite significant progress in reducing rates globally. In addition, more than 50,000 women a year in the United States — one every 10 minutes — nearly die from a severe complication experienced during pregnancy or childbirth.
Merck for Mothers is partnering with organizations to enhance community initiatives that coordinate care for high-risk women before, during, and after childbirth, implement approaches to address obstetric emergencies; and strengthen data collection and reviews to better understand why maternal deaths are occurring.
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Merck for Mothers is a 10-year, $500 million initiative focused on creating a world where no woman dies from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The company is working in more than 20 countries around the world.
Best Places for Clinical Research
The Oncology Best Places Report from KMR Group ranks the United States as the No. 1 country to conduct clinical research, followed by Germany. This is not surprising since these countries have a high level of experience in the field (based on the numbers of trials and patients engaged in clinical research) and a regulatory process that is relatively efficient. Emerging markets offer an appealing option for cancer research, with lower cost and greater access to patients serving as key factors.
The Top 10 Places for Clinical Research
- United States
2. Germany
3. France
4. Canada
5. Italy
6. United Kingdom
7. Poland
8. Russia
9. South Korea
10. Spain
Milestones…
Camargo Celebrates 10 Year Anniversary
Ken Phelps and Ruth Stevens founded Camargo Pharmaceutical Services in 2003 to help companies gain approval— and market exclusivity — under 505(b)(2) regulatory approval pathway. This pathway allows at least some of the information required for approval to come from studies not conducted by or for the applicant.
Innovation Corner…
Merck I Heritage Provider
Network Innovation Challenge
The Merck I Heritage Provider Network Innovation Challenge is a crowdsourcing competition that offers a total prize purse of $240,000 for breakthroughs in diabetes and heart disease research.
The competition challenges data scientists, tech developers, and other healthcare innovators to develop solutions that will help patients with diabetes and heart disease better adhere to treatment plans. Together these diseases claim almost 1 million lives every year, yet getting patients to stick to care plans remains a big problem in the health community.
Mobile care between patients and providers; artificial intelligence; behavioral data analytics — all are strategies presented by the five semifinalists.
Semi-finalists:
- Fit4D: Fit4D has developed a scalable and personalized program using a mix of its pathways technology platform and expert clinical service providers. The platform synthesizes workflow, data capture, device integration, and reporting enabling personalized service delivery via coaches within Fit4D’s network of nurses, dietitians, exercise physiologists, social workers, and pharmacists. (fit4d.com)
- Frame Health: Frame Health leverages the world’s largest personality characteristic database to produce comprehensive patient adherence profiles for the first time. In a six-minute session, the platform determines the psychological triggers that will be most effective to use to attain medical adherence with each patient. (framehealth.com)
- Sense Health (@SenseHealth): Sense Health crafts interactive conversations so providers can better support patients in between appointments. The Sense Health concept helps providers both create care plans and monitor care plans (and thus patient progress), while delivering SMS support to patients. (sensehealth.com)
- Vital Score (@VitalScore): Vital Score is a new vital sign for the primary care visit, modeled on the APGAR score and checklist — simple interventions that radically improve care. For the first time, the behavioral referral — whether for smoking cessation, medication adherence, or care management — is as easy as writing a prescription. (vitalscorehealth.com)
- Wellframe (@Wellframe): Wellframe reinvents the care plan using mobile devices, artificial intelligence, and human-centered process redesign. Wellframe has developed a clinically proven proprietary method of delivering care plans to patients as dynamically generated personalized multimedia daily to-do lists on mobile devices. (wellfra.me)
GSK Names Winners of Discovery Fast Track Competition
GlaxoSmithKline has selected eight winners in its first Discovery Fast Track Competition, designed to translate academic research into starting points for new potential medicines. The contest attracted 142 entries across 17 therapeutic areas from 70 universities, academic research institutions, clinics, and hospitals in the United States and Canada.
The winning projects show clear opportunities to deal with important unmet medical needs, including antibiotics resistance, diseases of the developing world, and certain cancer types. The selected scientists will collaborate with GSK’s Discovery Partnerships with Academia team, the sponsor of the competition, to rapidly screen and identify novel compounds to test their promising hypotheses. If advanced chemical testing is successful, the winning investigators could be offered a partnership to further refine molecules and assess their potential as novel new medicines.
Industry Growth to Accelerate
Greater access to medicines by the world’s rapidly expanding middle class, together with stronger economic prospects in developed nations, will bring total spending on medicines to the $1 trillion threshold in 2014 and to $1.2 trillion by 2017, according to new research by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.
Growth in global spending on medicines increased 2.6% to $965 billion in 2012, and is forecast to grow at a 3% to 6% compound annual rate over the next five years. With new product launches dominated by innovative specialty medicines, particularly for the treatment of cancer, payer concerns about rising costs for these drugs will intensify in developed and pharmerging markets. Spending on specialty medicines is expected to reach $230 billion to $240 billion in 2017, up 38% from the $171 billion spent in 2012.
Podcasts
Building Better Medication Adherence Models to Improve Health Outcomes
Provided by: Adheris
Biobetters: Challenges and Opportunities
Provided by: PRA
How Working Together Effectively on a Clinical Trial is Like Doing a Successful Skydive
Provided by: SynteractHCR
Risk-Based Monitoring (RBM): A Shift in Paradigm From the Traditional Experimental Design
Provided by: Theorem Clinical Research
White papers
Emerging Care Management Models in Developing Countries, a Case Study by IDC
Provided by: HCL Technologies
The Value of Biobetters
Provided by: PRA
Considerations for Efficiently Managing Global Clinical Trials
Provided by: SynteractHCR
