Selasa, 03 Mei 2011

Cepacol Lozenges Future Questionable After Snow Storm Collapsed Roof of Boston Area Manufacturer–May Be In Short Supply

I might guess some analytic business intelligence here to evaluated business models came into play here as now there’s a lawsuit filed against the manufacturer who instead of rebuilding the facility was looking for an opportunity to sell out.  It’s not imageknown if there is a search in place for a company to manufacture the lozenges.  First Boston Pharma in Gloucester, Massachusetts is where the roof caved in this winter with the drastic winter storms we had this year. 

If you read further the article states the assets were sold to BestSweet or at least an agreement was made to do so.  The question remains if they can gear up and get the Cepacol products out there and will it be done in North Carolina or what is the fate of the Massachusetts factory?  From looking at the website BestSweet also manufactures cough drops and right on the front page you can see an image that indicates they are a private label manufacturer for Walgreens and CVS.  image

The lawsuit contends that retail stores will not have an adequate supply and thus their sales will be impacted.   The lawsuit is contesting how the situation was handled with selling assets immediately instead of a recovery plan.  At any rate something along the way had to be done if the facility was closed or could not make the products and I guess we will hear more about this as it develops so you may not see Cepacol imageon the shelves or there could be a shortage so as consumers we will have to make other choices.  In the retail business, shelf space is a big deal and this is the basis of the lawsuit here as the distributors stand to los a lot of money without the product being available.   First Boston also makes other products and there was no mention on their fate so far.  One big snow storm changed the face of this business for sure.  BD

The company that distributes Cepacol Lozenges this week sued the Boston-area operation that has been manufacturing the product, alleging the company's response to a roof collapse during this winter's snowstorms has disrupted a supply chain at a critical time.

During the winter's storms, the roof on First Boston's Brockton, Mass.,manufacturing facility collapsed. At first, Reckitt Benckiser alleges in the suit, First Boston Pharma CEO Tim Hannan told the supplier that a plan was being developed to maintain production of Cepacol Lozenges. This was crucial, the suit states, because retailers allocate shelf space during the summer months.image

Reckitt Benckiser alleges in the suit that First Boston Pharma executives took a different course before long.

"Rather than work on a substantive recovery plan, First Boston began searching for an opportunity to sell its assets," the suit alleges.

The suit later states: "On March 15, 2011, (Hannan) notified (Reckitt Benckiser) by telephone that First Boston had agreed to sell its assets to BestSweet Inc." BestSweet is based in Mooresville, N.C.

Lozenge-seller sues Boston-area manufacturer | Boston Business Journal

HP Commits To Invest $25 Million To Stanford’s Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital To Include HP Labs Collaboration

As a quick review there’s a lot happening at Stanford today to include some very unique clinical trials with stem cells to coronary stent procedures done on an outpatient basis.  Below are a few recent posts.  Today HP has committed $25 million for the Children’s Hospital to allow for an expansion to add 100 new beds.  image

Also mentioned is the collaboration with HP Labs which consists of 7 locations one of which is Palo Alto where Stanford is located where research and development come together with medical institutions.  Bioinformatics tools along with analytics reporting are working to create better patient safety environments and further insight for personalized medicine. 

Patient safety is an issue all hospitals are addressing world wide.  Even big schools and universities today are dependent on contributions and technologies from big business and in addition to the consumer and technology imageproducts sold, healthcare sectors and partnerships with businesses are growing in the healthcare landscape today.  Much of what we see in the way of new cures and treatments would not be possible without philanthropy and other donation efforts.  In Los Angeles, which I just posted a couple days ago, Eli Broad is a big contributor.

Eli Broad A Major Philanthropists Giving Away Millions For Medical Research and More (Video)

From the HP Labs Website:

“HP Labs operates under the direction of Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President of Research for HP. We are organized into seven labs and four research groups located in seven major sites: in Palo Alto, USA; Bangalore, India; Beijing, China; Bristol, UK; Haifa, Israel; Fusionopolis, Singapore; and St. Petersburg, Russia. HP Labs also has significant research teams in Princeton, USA and in Barcelona, Spain.”

Stanford Joins Geron Spinal Cord Clinical Trials Program as the 3rd Location in the US

image

At Stanford Hospital Coronary Stent Processes Are Done On As an Outpatient Procedure–Using the Radial Artery in the Wrist

Stanford uses a medical record system from Epic and this is a quick mention about the collaboration that occurred to bring the the Iphone/Ipad application into the hands of clinicians a little over a year ago.  Also remember a short time back it makes the news when all medical students at Stanford were given Ipads and now that has been expanded to give them to patients in the Cath lab during recovery.   BD

Stanford Hospital Gives Ipads To Patients in the Catheterization and Angiography Labs

Press Release:

HP today announced a planned commitment of $25 million over 10 years to support the projected expansion of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford and a cutting-edge research initiative designed to enhance imagethe safety and quality of care for critically ill patients and their families.

HP’s new investment includes support for the expansion of Packard Children’s Hospital, which will add 100 beds to its Palo Alto campus and increase access to state-of-the-art treatments for local children and expectant mothers. With the existing facility already operating beyond its originally intended capacity, the growth will allow Packard Children’s Hospital to continue providing the most advanced cures, treatments and technologies available, performed by the best minds in pediatric and obstetric medicine, within a family-centered environment.

“HP’s generous commitment will bring tremendous resources to bear on the future of children’s healthcare,” said Christopher Dawes, president and chief executive officer, Packard Children’s Hospital. “Our partnership with HP has already succeeded in translating research discoveries into more effective clinical care, and we are thrilled to have their investment as we build new facilities to provide for future generations of children and expectant mothers.”

The grant also will help sustain and advance innovative, interdisciplinary research collaborations between scientists at HP Labs – the company’s central research arm – and Packard Children’s Hospital. Using powerful bioinformatics tools, the project team will investigate pressing issues of quality, patient safety and personalized care to achieve even better health outcomes for pediatric medicine worldwide.

“At HP, strengthening our local communities is a foundational responsibility and core to commitment to global citizenship,” said Léo Apotheker, HP president and chief executive officer. “We are working with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital to evolve patient care through innovation and help ensure that children and families continue to receive the most advanced and innovative care.”

Since 2007, leaders in quality, safety and bioinformatics from Packard Children’s Hospital, HP Labs and HP’s Enterprise Business have worked to develop faster, safer and more personalized patient care. Leveraging an earlier investment from HP and a new computerized physician order entry system, researchers at Packard Children’s Hospital developed a system of novel prompts for the deployment of “rapid response teams” at the first inkling of trouble in hospitalized children. The effective use of these teams was found to significantly reduce mortality rates in a pediatric setting.

Previous investments from HP also enabled Packard Children’s Hospital investigators to study environmental factors in disease development, personalized cancer therapy and genome sequencing.

Researchers at Packard Children’s Hospital and HP Labs are now leveraging safety lessons from high-reliability industries such as air travel and applying them to healthcare, enhancing “situational awareness” to further improve patient safety and quality of care. Upcoming studies will harness methods in data-driven science to find trends and patterns in clinical, genetic and environmental data that are expected to reach new levels of personalized medicine.

About Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford

Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2011, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital is annually ranked as one of the nation’s best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, and is the only San Francisco Bay Area children’s hospital with programs ranked in the U.S. News Top Ten. The 311-bed hospital is devoted to the care of children and expectant mothers, and provides pediatric and obstetric medical and surgical services in association with the Stanford University School of Medicine. Packard Children’s offers patients locally, regionally, and nationally a full range of health care programs and services, from preventive and routine care to the diagnosis and treatment of serious illness and injury. For more information, visit www.lpch.org.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure at the convergence of the cloud and connectivity, creating seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Receives $25 Million Planned Investment from HP

Ohio University Medical School Receives Record Gift of $105 Million To Train More Primary Care Doctors

The primary goal is to keep the education effort alive for primary care physicians and the gift represents the largest donation given to an Ohio institution.  In addition the donation is earmarked to also further research for diabetes. image

We have all heard for years that someday there would be a shortage of primary care doctors and if you read the news lately, we are hearing this quite frequently with the the current disruptive nature of healthcare relative to payer systems, analytics, and so forth, many have dropped out of the profession.  BD 

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A medical foundation has announced a record gift to an Ohio college: a $105 million award to help an Ohio University medical school turn out more primary care doctors and further its research into diabetes.
“This gift will transform lives,” said OU President Roderick McDavis of the money being given to the university’s College of Osteopathic Medicine by the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations. The gift announced at symposium in Columbus on Saturday represents the largest private donation ever given to an Ohio institution of higher learning, surpassing earlier $100 million gifts to OU and Ohio State University, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The ranks of traditional family doctors have been depleted by retirements and a tendency among younger physicians to specialize. Some of the money will allow the OU college to develop teaching tools, offer scholarships and arrange student loan repayment.

Beloit Daily News - your source for news, entertainment, sports, opinion, events, community, shopping and more > News > Health

Senin, 02 Mei 2011

Teva Pharmaceuticals Wins Bid for Cephalon for $6.8 Billion

Last time Teva was in the news here it was related to the news of their collaboration with Proctor and Gamble with creating an over the counter drug and marketing business, to compete generally with a division of Johnson and Johnson.  Teva also last week began opening up manufacturing in Irvine, California, a plant that has been closed for quite a while now, so some relief for a few drugs that have been in short supply. 

Teva And Procter & Gamble Create Over the Counter Drug Marketing and Distribution Business-Do The Consumer A Favor and Start Bar Coding for Recalls-They Will Happen

From the Cephalon website:

Founded in 1987 as a biotech start-up, we have grown into one of the world’s top ten biopharmaceutical companies, with an impressive roster of first-in-class products, a deep and diverse pipeline, and total revenues of $2.81 billion in 2010. And even though we’ve grown to have thousands of employees in locations around the globe, we’ve never lost the agility and nimbleness of a start-up.image

Our portfolio of innovative treatments for central nervous system disorders, pain, and cancer include eight proprietary products in the United States, along with more than 100 products internationally. Our research pipeline is focused on developing new compounds and new indications for existing products, while our business collaborations capitalize on new products and smart drug delivery technologies.

In the amount of time I have been doing the blog here it has been interesting to watch and see TEVA grow.  They are based in Israel and for the most part have been one of the most aggressive generic drug companies.  In addition, they do have a few drugs of their own they have developed in house, so over all they are very diversified.  One drug they used to supply to the US was propofol and I don’t see any mention so far of that drug coming back on line for them with manufacturing.  

PHILADELPHIA Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd. will acquire Cephalon Inc. of Frazer, Pa., in a $6.8 billion deal, the two companies announced Monday.

In recent weeks, Cephalon has warded off a hostile takeover attempt by Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., which is headquartered in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Ontario.

Valeant's offer of $73 per share was trumped by Teva's offer of $81.50 per share for all outstanding shares.

Teva said the combined companies would have about $7 billion in sales. The deal would be made with cash on hand, lines of credit, and through the public debt market, Teva said.

http://www.google.com/news?hl=&q=teva&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GZAG_en___US424&ie=UTF-8

Minggu, 01 Mei 2011

The Unspoken

The Unspoken - A 3 minute Film About Father-Son Communication  (HT: Pallimed)



Pressured to Refuse Ventilator -- Persuasion vs. Coercion

Simon Fitzmaurice, an Irish man with motor neuron disease (MND), revealed to the Irish Times how health professionals pressured him to refuse the ventilator that is keeping him alive.  Shortly after being admitted, a doctor informed him it was rare and expensive for patients with his condition to have a ventilator at home.  Fitzmaurice said the doctor told him: “That it is time for me to make the hard choice.  He tells me that there have only been two cases of invasive home ventilation, but in both cases the people were extremely wealthy. . . .  This is it now for you.  It is time for you to make the hard choice, Simon.”


There is a growing consensus that patients ought not be abandoned to their autonomy.  Physicians should share their recommendation.  Indeed, if they feel strongly about it, they might even attempt to persuade the patient with evidence and argument.  But physicians must be careful not to stray from rational persuasion to badgering, manipulation, or coercion.  Unfortunately, some patients often experience mere persuasion as coercion.   Other patients feel that the physician does not share enough.  


Anti-Euthanasia Cards

I do not regularly write about developments concerning Physician Aid-in-Dying.  Indeed, that would be quite a challenge with all the legislative initiatives and court cases now active across the globe.  But I was fascinated with this story in the Telegraph recently.  It reports that “many elderly people in the Netherlands are so fearful of euthanasia that they carry cards around with them saying that they do not want it.”  Some 6000 members of the Dutch Patients’ Association (NPV) have “living will declarations” stating that they do not want euthanasia if they are taken into hospital or a nursing home. 


Now, there may be some basis for concern about involuntary euthanasia in the Netherlands.  I am not writing about that.  My more immediate concern is that similar fear, misinformation, and distrust here in the United States will cause many people to complete the same sorts of cards (with respect to passive, not active, euthanasia), undermining the positive potential of advance care planning.  For example, the NRLC has been distributing a "Will to Live" for several years.  While such documents may accurately reflect the preferences of some individuals, they are inappropriate for many.