Making Medicines Affordable

Making Medicines Affordable PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309468086
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Book Description
Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.

Decision Making in Health and Medicine

Decision Making in Health and Medicine PDF Author: M. G. Myriam Hunink
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107690471
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 447

Book Description
A guide for everyone involved in medical decision making to plot a clear course through complex and conflicting benefits and risks.

Making Plant Medicine

Making Plant Medicine PDF Author: Richo Cech
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780970031235
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
An herbal medicine making book and formulary with its roots in original herbalism designed for home medicine makers, herbal schools and small manufacturers.

Deep Medicine

Deep Medicine PDF Author: Eric Topol
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541644646
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Book Description
A Science Friday pick for book of the year, 2019 One of America's top doctors reveals how AI will empower physicians and revolutionize patient care Medicine has become inhuman, to disastrous effect. The doctor-patient relationship--the heart of medicine--is broken: doctors are too distracted and overwhelmed to truly connect with their patients, and medical errors and misdiagnoses abound. In Deep Medicine, leading physician Eric Topol reveals how artificial intelligence can help. AI has the potential to transform everything doctors do, from notetaking and medical scans to diagnosis and treatment, greatly cutting down the cost of medicine and reducing human mortality. By freeing physicians from the tasks that interfere with human connection, AI will create space for the real healing that takes place between a doctor who can listen and a patient who needs to be heard. Innovative, provocative, and hopeful, Deep Medicine shows us how the awesome power of AI can make medicine better, for all the humans involved.

A Brief History of Pharmacy

A Brief History of Pharmacy PDF Author: Bob Zebroski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317413318
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Pharmacy has become an integral part of our lives. Nearly half of all 300 million Americans take at least one prescription drug daily, accounting for $250 billion per year in sales in the US alone. And this number doesn't even include the over-the-counter medications or health aids that are taken. How did this practice become such an essential part of our lives and our health? A Brief History of Pharmacy: Humanity's Search for Wellness aims to answer that question. As this short overview of the practice shows, the search for well-being through the ingestion or application of natural products and artificially derived compounds is as old as humanity itself. From the Mesopotamians to the corner drug store, Bob Zebroski describes how treatments were sought, highlights some of the main victories of each time period, and shows how we came to be people who rely on drugs to feel better, to live longer, and look younger. This accessible survey of pharmaceutical history is essential reading for all students of pharmacy.

Making Medicines in Africa

Making Medicines in Africa PDF Author: Maureen Mackintosh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137546476
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The importance of the pharmaceutical industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, its claim to policy priority, is rooted in the vast unmet health needs of the sub-continent. Making Medicines in Africa is a collective endeavour, by a group of contributors with a strong African and more broadly Southern presence, to find ways to link technological development, investment and industrial growth in pharmaceuticals to improve access to essential good quality medicines, as part of moving towards universal access to competent health care in Africa. The authors aim to shift the emphasis in international debate and initiatives towards sustained Africa-based and African-led initiatives to tackle this huge challenge. Without the technological, industrial, intellectual, organisational and research-related capabilities associated with competent pharmaceutical production, and without policies that pull the industrial sectors towards serving local health needs, the African sub-continent cannot generate the resources to tackle its populations' needs and demands. Research for this book has been selected as one of the 20 best examples of the impact of UK research on development. See http://www.ukcds.org.uk/the-global-impact-of-uk-research for further details.

Making Medicine

Making Medicine PDF Author: Keith Veronese
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1633887545
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Book Description
How do scientists design the medicine we use to improve our lives? It turns out that many are happy accidents or overlooked mixtures of carbon and hydrogen that go on to not only improve the lives of people the world over, but become million- and billion-dollar makers for pharmaceutical companies. In Making Medicine: Surprising Stories from the History of Drug Discovery, author Keith Veroneseexamines fifteen different molecules and their unlikely discovery –or in many cases, their second discovery –en route to becoming invaluable medications. From the famous story of Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, to lesser-known stories surrounding drugs like quinine (derived from the bark of the cinchona tree and responsible for saving the lives of millions in the fight against malaria), Veronese reveals the “how” and the “who” behind the pharmaceutical breakthroughs that continue to impact our world. With subjects including cancer-fighting therapies and over-the-counter pain relievers; hair regrowth creams and antidepressants; readers will no doubt have a personal connection to at least one molecule in this book. Like all discoveries made by mankind, the stories behind these breakthroughs and their introduction to the world are often messy, sometimes controversial, and always human. Take digoxin, which correctly prescribed can help heart efficiency, but in higher doses can prove fatal –a fact known all too well by Charles Cullen, a nurse who used digoxin to kill over forty patients. Making Medicine also details how modern pharmaceutical discovery works, including the monumental challenge and accomplishment of creating a COVID-19 vaccine. This fascinating book highlights the serendipitous nature of the discovery of these miracle molecules, along with how they do (or don't) interact with the human body to produce the desired result.

Overtreated

Overtreated PDF Author: Shannon Brownlee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596917296
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 363

Book Description
Our health care is staggeringly expensive, yet one in six Americans has no health insurance. We have some of the most skilled physicians in the world, yet one hundred thousand patients die each year from medical errors. In this gripping, eye-opening book, award-winning journalist Shannon Brownlee takes readers inside the hospital to dismantle some of our most venerated myths about American medicine. Brownlee dissects what she calls "the medical-industrial complex" and lays bare the backward economic incentives embedded in our system, revealing a stunning portrait of the care we now receive. Nevertheless, Overtreated ultimately conveys a message of hope by reframing the debate over health care reform. It offers a way to control costs and cover the uninsured, while simultaneously improving the quality of American medicine. Shannon Brownlee's humane, intelligent, and penetrating analysis empowers readers to avoid the perils of overtreatment, as well as pointing the way to better health care for everyone.

Decision Making in Medicine

Decision Making in Medicine PDF Author: Stuart B. Mushlin
Publisher: Elsevier Health Sciences
ISBN: 0323041078
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 754

Book Description
This popular reference facilitates diagnostic and therapeutic decision making for a wide range of common and often complex problems faced in outpatient and inpatient medicine. Comprehensive algorithmic decision trees guide you through more than 245 disorders organized by sign, symptom, problem, or laboratory abnormality. The brief text accompanying each algorithm explains the key steps of the decision making process, giving you the clear, clinical guidelines you need to successfully manage even your toughest cases. An algorithmic format makes it easy to apply the practical, decision-making approaches used by seasoned clinicians in daily practice. Comprehensive coverage of general and internal medicine helps you successfully diagnose and manage a full range of diseases and disorders related to women's health, emergency medicine, urology, behavioral medicine, pharmacology, and much more. A Table of Contents arranged by organ system helps you to quickly and easily zero in on the information you need. More than a dozen new topics focus on the key diseases and disorders encountered in daily practice. Fully updated decision trees guide you through the latest diagnostic and management guidelines.

The Social Transformation of American Medicine

The Social Transformation of American Medicine PDF Author: Paul Starr
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780465079353
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book Description
Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care system of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs has evolved over the last two centuries. "The definitive social history of the medical profession in America....A monumental achievement."—H. Jack Geiger, M.D., New York Times Book Review