Pharmacy staff who are thought to have died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are to be among the healthcare workers remembered with a minute’s silence on 28 April 2020.

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Pharmacists will not be automatically eligible for a new government life assurance scheme for healthcare workers in England who die from COVID-19 during the pandemic.

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Community pharmacists are to be included in the government life assurance scheme for staff working on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health secretary, Matt Hancock has announced.

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March 12, 2020 —[Note: Due to the coronavirus epidemic, the Conference has been rescheduled from May.] Healthcare was already the top issue for voters—and the coronavirus pandemic only intensifies the focus heading into a hotly-contested election. Both parties want to “do something” about the cost of healthcare and especially drug prices, and what happens when […]

March 30, 2020 – In addition to providing millions of Americans and many industries with financial support during the coronavirus outbreak, the emergency relief bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump on Friday accrues additional funding for the Food and Drug Administration’s coronavirus efforts and makes important changes to how […]

Venture capital firm Frazier Healthcare has grabbed Scott Byrd, Ian Mills, and Gordon McMurray as its new Entrepreneur-in-Residence consultants.

Following in the footsteps of an increasing number of biopharmas that want to use data to get more bang for their buck in R&D, J&J has promoted Najat Khan, Ph.D., to the role of chief data science officer.

Johnson & Johnson taps Khan for chief data role; Icon poaches AstraZeneca vet Buck as CMO; Intellia signs on Lebwohl as CMO.

A recent study looking at the effects of caffeine on brief, high intensity exercise found the substance improved performance, regardless of genetic variations in how subjects metabolized caffeine.

There is an âindisputable relation between vitamin D and the immune systemâ, says a new review that shows that avoiding vitamin D deficiency has clear benefits for immune health.

Researchers working with a group of postmenopausal women found that a technology using casein to encapsulate calcium nanoparticles reduced GI issues compared with more conventional calcium carbonate or calcium citrate supplements.

The unpredictable spikes in demand that are distorting the supply chain in the current crisis has created another opportunity, in this case for herbal ingredients that help adults deal with urinary incontinence issues.

The GMP Starter Kit aims to help guide brands through current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) regulations and FDA compliance for nutritional and dietary supplement brands.

Combining exercise with a bacterial strain isolated from an Olympic weightlifting gold medalist may synergistically increase endurance compared to training or the probiotic alone, suggests data from a mouse study.

I saw the Breakthrough Prizes announced this weekend and was excited to learn about the interesting scientists on the list, including Jennifer Doudna who many of us in life science recognize for her CRISPR/Cas9 work. I’ll start out saying that I am glad to see a group of such influential people (Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark

Last week, the New York Times had a nice piece “A Faster Way to Try Many Drugs on Many Cancers” on basket clinical trials, which matches patients to a therapy based on the genetics of their tumor as opposed to the site of their primary tumor. This type of trial feeds into the current excitement about precision

Yesterday’s conference sessions surfaced interesting questions and approaches regarding the post-acute sector, bundled payment, emergency medicine and anesthesia. Post-Acute Focus: With more and more focus on the need to rationalize and re-organize the post-acute sector, we have seen multiple industry leaders start to evolve their strategies.  I blogged yesterday about AccentCare’s interesting strategy in the...… Continue Reading

In response to President Obama’s National Cancer Moonshot initiative to eliminate cancer, the USPTO has launched the “Cancer Immunotherapy Pilot Program.” The Pilot Program provides an accelerated review for applications related to cancer immunotherapy and is set to launch in July 2016. According to the USPTO, this initiative: aims to cut the time it takes to...… Continue Reading

Pharmaceutical and biotech companies breathed a sigh of relief Monday when the Federal Circuit unanimously ruled in a precedential opinion that the mere sale of manufacturing services to create embodiments of a patented product is not a “commercial sale” of the invention that triggers the on-sale bar of 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) (pre-AIA).[1]  The en banc opinion...… Continue Reading

A large amount of wind, much discussion about the U.S healthcare, and the public getting soaked again – if you were thinking about Washington, DC and the new Congress, you’re 3,000 miles away from the action. This is the week of the annual JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco, with many thousands of healthcare...… Continue Reading

Addressing the Social Determinants of Health:  Is the healthcare industry pushing a rock up a hill?  We collectively are trying to provide healthcare with improved quality and reduced cost, but the structure of the nation’s healthcare system remains heavily siloed with the social determinants of health often falling wholly or partly outside the mandate and...… Continue Reading

Day 3 of the JPMorgan healthcare conference was one of striking contrasts between the old and the new. (And, by the way, the rain finally stopped for a day, but it will be back tomorrow to finish off the last day of the conference). The Old:  Sitting in the Community Health Systems (CHS) presentation and...… Continue Reading

Some interesting presentations on the last day of the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference that concentrated on common themes – the increasing importance of ancillary business line to bolster core business revenue and of filling in holes to achieve scale and full-service offerings. Genesis Healthcare – The largest U.S. skilled nursing facility (SNF) provider, which also is...… Continue Reading

It has been some time since the MDCG guidance on cybersecurity for medical devices was released (MDCG 2019-16 December 2019), so everybody has probably had the opportunity to get used to the document by now. While the document is by no means ideal or even flawless (congratulations MDCG on a glaring spelling mistake in the […]

I have blogged before about the effects and possibilities of the Corrigendum of December 2019 for class I medical devices. I refer you to that blog for the background to this discussion, which covers the mechanics of timing. The draft corrigendum discussed in that blog was adopted as described.  The new guidance The MDCG has […]

It’s always a risk to put out a theory about legislative oversight after a Sherlock Homes investigation that eliminates all other options as I did in my last blog about the MDR amendment proposal. Recent development seem to confirm that I was right in assuming that not touching the two dates of application of 26 […]

When it rains guidance, it pours. The MDCG just released Guidance on temporary extraordinary measures related to medical devices Notified Body audits during COVID-19 quarantine orders and travel restrictions. The guidance takes immediate effect and is valid for the whole period of duration of the pandemic COVID-19 as declared by the World Health Organisation. It […]

San Francisco will allow certain businesses to reopen beginning May 18 as it eases its stay-at-home orders. But officials warn that they will keep track to make coronavirus infections don't spike.

A federal judge found that the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic was good cause for the delay.

When it opened last week for the first time since mid-March, Nomads Canteen in San Clemente quickly filled with customers eager to get out of the house and return to some sense of normalcy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

California college students will get emergency CARES grants

California is slowly reopening, providing hope that you might soon see your favorite artist in concert. But from an arena stage? A computer screen? A drive-in?

The America that condones mass murder of children is allowing the coronavirus to spread.

Three members of the group Indivisible OC 48 staged an hourlong protest to bring attention to the people who are following Gov. Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the high school and college classes of 2020 — and their families — the coronavirus outbreak has left a large, empty space where signature coming-of-age moments should be.

Despite President Trump's statements that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory in Wuhan, scientist say the evidence points to a natural origin.

By Rachael E. Hunt —

By Karla L. Palmer —

Researchers found that temperature extremes previously thought to be rare have been recorded more than 1,000 times in 40 years.

Lucky Devil's dancers put on a show in the parking lot when customers order takeout.

The surgeon general's report is the first in 30 years to focus entirely on quitting tobacco.

Over the past year Juul has faced criticism and scrutiny over its role in what public health officials call an "epidemic" of teen nicotine addiction.,

Yokogawa Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6841) announced today that its subsidiary, Yokogawa Engineering Asia, has been awarded a contract from PUB, Singapore's National Water Agency, to develop a plant simulation system for the Lower Seletar Waterworks, a 60 million gallons per day (mgd) water treatment facility in Singapore. This is part of PUB's continual investments in innovation and R&D to ensure a safe and sustainable water supply for Singapore.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6841) announces that it has acquired a nanopipette*1 technology that was developed by BioStinger, Inc., a spin-off from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6841) and MetaMoJi Corporation announce that they have jointly developed SensPlus Note, a low cost and easy to implement solution for the digitization of plant data on mobile devices. SensPlus Note, a solution in Yokogawa's OpreX Operation and Maintenance Improvement family, improves the efficiency and quality of maintenance work and the precision of post-maintenance analyses by enabling data from plant field work to be used more efficiently. This solution will be released in all markets worldwide on January 31.