[WorldPharmaNews] Pfizer Inc. is conducting the first-ever randomized clinical trial under an investigational new drug (IND) application that manages study participation entirely using electronic tools and allows patients to participate in the clinical trial regardless of their proximity to clinical sites. The pilot project, initiated following review from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), [...]

[New York Times] Standard outpatient medical care affronts all logical time management. You wait for an appointment, you wait to be seen, and then comes the hectic series of milliseconds that constitutes the medical encounter itself. Before you remember half your agenda, you are firmly ushered on your way, down the exit chute to start [...]

[New York Times] The randomized clinical trial, long the gold standard of medical research, supposedly provides the most reliable data regarding which drugs, devices and procedures prove effective on real patients and which don’t. But when the people enrolled in the trial are quite different from those who will actually use the drug or device [...]

[ScienceMag] The U.S. government released new final rules today that will tighten up oversight of financial conflicts of interest in biomedical research. The rules are similar to draft regulations released in May of last year, but a requirement aimed at informing the public about conflicts has been watered down.
The 159-page rule (including preamble) tightens a [...]

[NY Times] Federal officials and lawmakers, along with the drug industry and doctors’ groups, are rushing to find remedies for critical shortages of drugs to treat a number of life-threatening illnesses, including bacterial infection and several forms of cancer.
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The proposed solutions, which include a national stockpile of cancer medicines and a nonprofit company that will [...]

[Forbes] Vertex Pharmaceuticals has been going up against drug giant Merck in a marketing battle to treat hepatitis C — and so far it’s winning in a big way.
Despite a partnership with Roche, one of the traditional leaders in the hepatitis C market, Vertex’s Incivek is being prescribed four times as often as Merck’s Victrelis, [...]

[NY Times]The Federal Trade Commission has issued an advisory opinion questioning a proposed New York State law intended to make it easier for neighborhood drug stores to compete with mail-order pharmacies.The opinion was quietly released on Monday and has stirred up a storm of protest from local pharmacists, who contend that they can provide drugs [...]

[NY Times] Medicaid gets much deeper discounts on many prescription drugs than Medicare, in part because Medicaid discounts are set by law whereas Medicare prices are negotiated by private insurers and drug companies, federal investigators said Monday in a new report.
The report, from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, could [...]

[NY TImes] Soon after I finished my surgical training, I worked with a young doctor who was impressive not only for his clinical skills but also for his devotion to patients. He was large and powerfully built but never seemed to loom over his patients, miraculously shrinking down to their eye level whenever he spoke [...]

[New York Times]
Two new studies offer good news for newborns and children about two different vaccinations — flu vaccine for pregnant women, and rotavirus vaccine for infants.
There is no flu vaccine licensed for children under 6 months, and infants that age have the highest rates of pediatric influenza hospitalization. But a flu vaccine can still [...]