The relentless search for innovation is the rallying call of industry today, and big pharma is no different. Thousands of employees are commonly huddled together in impressive conference rooms and amphitheaters and the key task is send down from on high: INNOVATE. Then, those huddled masses, sometimes even struck with the fear of obsolescence, look to each other in hopes of finding that magic.
As simple as answering a phone, therapy can be now adjusted “in the moment” to support specific activities. Today, advances in sophisticated technology and simulation are combined with consumer friendly, smartphone convenience.
Improving people’s health and supporting improved clinical outcomes for patients is predominantly about behavioural change. Certainly digital health interventions are predicated on the idea that we can modify behaviour, whether this is adherence to medication or changes in lifestyle. Unfortunately this is not easy to achieve, human beings are complex and when it comes to health this complexity is magnified.
In this season when we are meant to be thankful, but when so many of us have had so many reasons to be otherwise - we have received a timely, welcome bit of universally good news. Rates of dementia in the United States appear to be declining.
Misinformation is very much in season. Disclosures since the presidential election about massively disseminated misinformation, some of it inadvertent, some of it willfully manipulative, have come fast and furious.
As a year of particular assaults on everything anybody thinks they know about diet and health, including if not particularly the science underlying the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, winds down - it’s inevitable to reflect on what anyone truly knows about diet, and how we know it. The merchants of doubt, profiting handsomely from the status quo and perpetual confusion, would have you think no one knows much of anything, so enjoy some Coke with those fries.
There has been a recent story in the news about a Publix Pharmacy employee, Alvin Ahmed, who went missing after his shift at his pharmacy about a week ago. There hasn’t been many updates so far except for Facebook posts by Alvin’s brother, Kalvin. I cannot imagine what him and his family must be going through. But, in a recent post Kalvin mentioned he hoped this situation would bring awareness to prevent this from happening to someone else and with that in mind, I hope this article provides some best practices that every pharmacy individual could follow to do just that.