Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most complex global health challenges today. The world has long ignored warnings that antibiotics and other medicines are losing their effectiveness after decades of overuse and misuse in human medicine, animal health and agriculture. Common illnesses like pneumonia, postoperative infections, diarrheal and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as the world’s largest infectious disease killers – tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria – are increasingly becoming untreatable because of the emergence and spread of drug resistance. Worsening antimicrobial resistance could have serious public health, economic and social implications. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and other democrats introduced legislation aimed at controlling drug prices, providing a prize for the introduction of a new antibiotic to market that provides activity against resistant infections or other key lifesaving characteristics. Strengths of prize approach to incentivizing R&D f
This blog post is in response to the healthcare-economist’s post : which presents several case-studies from big firms namely Samsung, Apple, CVS, AT&T, Time Warner and Google efforts in improving healthcare and consumer-oriented health technologies, and questions, “At a time when money is pouring into targeting digital health, price transparency, workflow and electronic medical records systems and population health management, which company would be health-care’s Amazon.com?” (Amazon being a metaphor). From the recent post in the same blog, it seems Amazon has started surveying the sector, by having a health tech team called 1492 working on medical records, virtual doc visits and another unit exploring selling pharmaceuticals. A recent report that Amazon had acquired pharmacy wholesaler licenses also sparked a major wave of excitement in the industry. Although, the licenses Amazon applied for happen to cover the distribution of medical-surgical equipment, devices, and o