Page 112 - Mployee Wellness Programs News Today

At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.

Astellas Pharma has identified targeted protein degradation as one of the key areas for growth. The PeptiDream alliance is the latest one Astellas has struck in this particular area of drug research as it aims to find new ways to go after difficult cancer targets.

About 36% of U.S. hospitals are in compliance with CMS' price transparency rule, up from 24.5% in February, according to a new report. This progress will remain slow unless CMS can do a better job of effectively enforcing its rule, the report declared.

Patients are driving the push away from needles, and there are a number of novel approaches attempting to solve the difficult task of transforming biologics into orally administered treatments.

Alnylam pioneered RNA interference drugs for rare disease. The biotech aims to bring RNAI to prevalent disorders and its alliance with Roche on the drug zilebesiran for hypertension better positions the company to achieve this goal.

Doctors are competitive by nature, especially when they are compared against their peers. If they can fully trust how they are evaluated and how they compare with their peers, they will respond with great enthusiasm.

While communities should tailor their opioid settlement spending strategies to their local needs, we should embrace basic, population-focused prevention strategies. Prevention efforts can turn the tide of addiction for decades to come.  And they are where we’ll get the biggest bang for our buck.

AppliedVR teamed up with the National Cancer Institute to study the feasibility of VR to alleviate anxiety in brain tumor patients undergoing imaging scans. The research partners recently announced interim analysis results from their clinical study — they said that not only would VR intervention be a feasible option to reduce patients’ anxiety, but that patients would report high satisfaction levels as well.

When asked what the key issues influencing benefits strategy are, 80% of employers said competition for talent, 67% said rising costs, 41% said a focus on inclusion and diversity and 39% said increasing mental health problems, according to a recent Willis Towers Watson survey.

What we need to overcome adherence challenges is a digitally enabled marketplace of options that can be personalized to the patient and the context of their specific condition, pharmacy preference and ability to pay.