The rapidly rising rate of opioid overdoses is one of the United States’ direst health crises. Addiction to illicit opioids like heroin has cast a shadow over the American health landscape for decades. However, a combination of the increasing ease of availability of powerful prescription opioids like Oxycodone and Fentanyl and rising heroin usage have […]
Everyone wants to be trusted, especially in a medical profession, right? A new Gallup poll shows that pharmacists have once again been named among the most honest and ethical career professionals in the United States. In 2016’s annual poll, pharmacists were given a “high” or “very high” rating by 67% of the poll’s respondents and […]
During this past year’s hot button political season, Big Pharma took plenty of heat from all sides for the rising cost of life-saving drugs. It’s easy to understand why. When faced with an impossible choice between paying outrageous markups for necessary drugs or foregoing the purchase and putting one’s own well-being at risk, individual consumers […]
After several burglaries at area pharmacies, police in Tustin, California, turned to a new tool in their arsenal: GPS technology. A police department crime analyst looked at the date and location of previous pharmacy burglaries in the Los Angeles suburb to try to discover patterns. They decided that the Creative Compounding Pharmacy on Newport Street […]
The backroom work of counting pills and putting them into bottles has long been all in a day’s work for pharmacists. But in recent years, some hospitals and pharmacies are turning increasingly to pharmacy automation systems to take care of that. Robots, in the common parlance. One popular model is the PillPick, manufactured by SwissLog. […]
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is sponsoring a landmark study in South Africa to test an experimental HIV vaccine. The clinical trials will begin this week at 15 different sites across the country. HIV is a major health concern in South Africa; a 2007 report estimated that 5.7 million people—nearly 12% of […]
With winter invariably comes an increase in cases of the common cold—and sales of the over the counter medications used to manage symptoms from a cold. But for people with high blood pressure, cold medicine can be dangerous. One of the most common symptoms of the cold is nasal congestion, which happens when tissues in […]
According to the 2016 public perception survey from The Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB), 85% of the public believes it is “very important” for pharmacies to have certified technicians on staff. They feel so strongly about this matter than more than three-quarters of them (76%) say they’d go to a different pharmacy, if for any […]
