The Dartboard Toss and the Algorithm

By GEORGE BEAUREGARD How A.I. could have personalized my 2005 cancer journey I don’t think I’m in the minority of Baby Boomer physicians when it comes to my curiosity and ambivalence about the progressing application of A.I. in medicine. But that curiosity isn’t just prospective, it’s retrospective too. In 2005, I became an outlier who…

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Most Favored Nation Drug Pricing in the U.S.: Comparing GENEROUS, GLOBE and GUARD

The Trump administration has introduced three most-favored-nation (MFN) drug pricing initiatives designed to link U.S. pharmaceutical costs to prices paid in economically comparable countries. Most-favored-nation pricing requires manufacturers to provide rebates when U.S. prices exceed those in reference nations—a direct response to the persistent gap between U.S. drug prices and those in other developed economies….

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As COVID-19 Divisions, Attacks, and Misinformation Take Their Toll, Less Than Half of the Public Is Confident That the CDC and FDA Can Carry Out Core Functions 

Five years after the start of  COVID-19 pandemic and the communications challenges, divisions, and false claims that followed, less than half of the public say they have at least some confidence in the federal government’s health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to carry…More

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How many patients are switching to biosimilars?

That is a key question if long-run drug prices are going to come down for biologic products. We can decompose this question into 3 sub-questions: What share patients initiating therapy start on a biosimilar?What share of patients already using a biologic products switch to a biosimilar?Do patient of physician factors drive biosimilar prescribing patterns? A…

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Let a Thousand DNA Flowers Bloom

By KIM BELLARD When I saw a headline about “DNA flowers,” I was nonplused. I mean: aren’t all flowers made out of DNA, like every living thing on our planet? Well, it turns out that the DNA flowers are actually soft robots – make that nanobots – so my interest was definitely piqued. The DNA…

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