Last month, My MedRec went global. If you’re not familiar with the app, My MedRec is a free system designed on behalf of pharmaceutical industry representative association Rx&D. The iPhone friendly system helps users track their medications, including dosage, timing and drug information. Additionally it creates an easily shareable data that can be sent to doctors, nurses and pharmacists, ensuring seamless medical care. The app makes a lot of sense in the face of the fact that Canadians are the leading smart phone adopters in the world. As well as having some sort of smart phone in their pocket, most.. READ MORE »
As of October, with the inclusion of New Brunswick, every Canadian province will have a catastrophic drug plan in place. These last resort measures protect families from medical bankruptcy and losing access to life saving treatments. There are slight variations in plans, but New Brunswick is adopting a model with no ceiling on spending for assistance. To qualify, candidates must simply exceed a certain percent of family income in drug spending. For the poorest families, this is 3% and for the wealthiest, payments in excess of 12%, assuring universal coverage for those in need, regardless of their backgrounds. This follows.. READ MORE »
At the end of May, four companies announced a recall on five drugs commonly sold in Canada. The recall is not about a problem with the medications themselves, as a treatment. Amlodipine, ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, lamotrigine and telmisartan are all still considered to be safe and effective in their own right. Instead, the recall affects only certain batches and lot numbers. This issue provides a case study for pharmaceutical quality control from the manufacturing side of things. No pharmaceutical company wants the bad publicity of a recall, but this incident also shows the necessary redundancies in pharmaceutical quality assurance. In this.. READ MORE »
report by Rx&D, the Canadian association of pharmaceutical companies, confirms an ongoing trend of under-reporting of pharmaceutical innovation investment by government bodies. The report, released in May, shows a consistent 34% under-reporting rate over the past three years. Pharmaceutical research investment in Canada is tracked by two government agencies, Statistics Canada and PRPMB (Patented Medicine Prices Review Board). The agencies work independently because they are gathering information for different mandates, and use separate methodology, but both produce similar data. However, Rx&D, which is also responsible for considerable self-regulation in the pharmaceutical industry, decided to track their own investments through studies.. READ MORE »
We’ve talked a lot about issues of interest to people in the pharmaceutical industry, but at AAPS, a commitment to quality control and consumer safety doesn’t stop with drugs and medical manufacturing. We’re also interested in using our knowledge for food safety certification for commercial food handlers of all kinds, and for teaching the BRC food safety standards to food manufacturers. In Ontario, food handling is regulated by laws like the Food Safety and Quality Act of 2001 (last amended in 2009). The highlights of the act include the requirement, alongside regulation 562, that food handlers of all kind have.. READ MORE »
