This photograph captures the objective manifestation of the physical and metaphorical power that colonizers exert over nature and the native land upon which it rests. This photograph was taken on Frontier Road near 74th Street in the LaSalle neighborhood of Niagara Falls, NY. LaSalle was incorporated as a village in 1897 and was annexed as […]
Inspired by an article that appeared in a 2017 edition UU World, this Fibonacci Chalice design is engraved and painted on a white 12 by 12 inch ceramic tile. Our concept of the Fibonacci sequence comes from observing nature, perceiving a pattern, and articulating it – which is the heart of science. This design is […]
A multi-colored lotus is engraved and painted on a white square of 12” x 12 “ ceramic tile. It can be used as a hot plate or wall art. The Lotus flower has numerous sacred meanings. Many deities in Asian religions are painted sitting on a Lotus flower. In Buddhism, the Lotus flower is a […]
“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder – a secret order.” – Carl Jung Many times in life when we come to a fork in the road, we have two options: evolve or repeat. We can stay the course, remain unchanged, and continue subscribing to the status quo, or we can make […]
“Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not melioration. For every thing that is given something is taken.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson In […]
“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen Society was destabilizing and disintegrating in front of our eyes. The severely cracked foundation that America was built on had crumbled to dust and was laid bare for us to see. Our unemployment, student loan, welfare, health insurance, and housing […]
Embodying loving kindness is a conscious decision that must be made every moment. Simply reducing the pace at which we trudge through life allows us to listen and treat each other with loving kindness. We live fast and speak fast, but often forget to listen. Negativity, hatred, anger, and misery are automatic, but being positive […]
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with nature.” – Joseph Campbell The coronavirus led to the conclusion of life as we knew it. School, work, celebrations, eating at restaurants, going to movie theaters, and many more aspects of daily life came to […]
“All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.” – Blaise Pascal During the pandemic, people were thrust into awareness. No matter what you did, you couldn’t hide from the virus. You couldn’t not acknowledge the devastation. It was all around. It was inescapable: bars were closed, […]
“We suffer because we forget our belonging to one another” – Mother Teresa The Buddha teaches us that there is suffering. Most suffering we create when we attach our being to our form. We suffer when we build our sense of self on a perceived meaning, our form, or our identity. We suffer when we […]
“How can we say we’re separate from the very atmosphere that we breathe?” – Roshi Joan Halifax The coronavirus was transmitted through respiratory droplets (ie: sneezing, coughing, shouting, breathing, etc.). When there is no treatment or vaccine, the only option to reduce transmission is to have people physically distance. This is when people distance themselves […]
“Egotism is that certain something that enables a man in a rut, to think he is in the groove.” – Author Unknown If you find yourself here and have skipped the Introduction, I implore you to go back and read it. It is not full of flowering generalities, but rather it is vital in setting […]
“Finding beauty in a broken world, is creating beauty in the world we find.” – Terry Tempest Williams The year 2020 could be described as a pivotal moment in history for Americans. The country was already suffering from racial tensions, unequal healthcare access, economic hardships, and extreme political polarity. Once coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) hit the shores […]
On the surface, it may sometimes look like drug companies are doing good things with their money and trying to improve the society that consumes their products. Nestle, a candy company based in Switzerland, is partnering with a drug company to provide its food engineering expertise in a joint effort to make medicines taste good. […]
Moderna is a drug company that’s been very secretive about what product they’re developing. The startup claims to be working on a new class of drugs that manipulate antibodies into producing drugs via therapeutic proteins (Vardi, 2016). It wasn’t until Acuitas filed a lawsuit in British Columbia that Moderna revealed exactly what they’re working on. […]
With all of the settlements that Big Pharma has to pay, one might conclude that the industry is not stable enough to support itself; however, drug companies are experiencing growth and are commonly found on the Fortune 500 List (Law, 2006). According AlterNet, “Pharmaceutical companies have been hit with $14.8 billion in wrongdoing settlements in […]
What is the benefit and/or harm of using increasingly specific classifications to identify subpopulations of diverse people? Is the use of one umbrella term more effective and inclusive? Diverse communities of people are not monolithic. Subpopulations of diverse people can flourish within diverse environments which gives way to an exponential growth in our classification lexicon. […]
Although there are lots of physical, tangible diseases that cause people to become ill, there is a single disease that is intangible, not quantifiable, but no less lethal. It’s called Life Sucks Disease (LSD). People commonly accept the notion that high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes can kill us. But what about all of […]
Modern business practices suggest that GE should separate all of its product lines into many small businesses. Welch refused to do so. Even while hospitalized, he remained adamant that he did not want GE’s diverse portfolio broken up. In the end, GE was successful partly due to Welch’s defiance of the status quo. Welch’s initiatives […]
Companies looking to gain space in markets oversees need to be aware of local laws and regulations that are applicable to their industry. Companies that operate in China are subject to local laws and need to pay close attention to anti-bribery laws. GlaxoSmithKline is a multinational drug company that employs 100,000 people around the world […]
A “bunch of guys sitting around and talking”. This is not just a common occurrence in everyday life; this is an important business phenomenon. It is not enough for leaders to act as cogs in a machine; they need to perform a valuable, useful service that benefits the organization as a whole. Reed, the director […]
The pharmacy field is constantly changing and is a career that is currently in high demand. More pharmacy schools are being built and hold the responsibility of training the pharmacists of the future. Due to accreditation standards set by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), programs are expected to have their students complete Introductory […]
Good leadership starts at the hiring process. Organizations need employees that independently lead but also follow their managers. In order for managers to hire leader-worthy employees, the hiring process should be reexamined, modified, and improved (O’Connor, 2013). O’Connor (2013) says that “process change comes from the bottom-up, but culture change moves from the top-down” (p. […]
“I would prefer to spend time discussing briefly our greatest need in hospital pharmacy – leadership” (Francke, 1955). The need to discuss pharmacy leadership is still relevant today. There is a great lack of leadership that still exists in the pharmacy profession. Leadership comprises capacity, goals, and efficacy. Hospital organizations are unique because they are […]
In an increasingly competitive landscape, pharmaceutical companies are finding creative ways to protect their patents. Most of the time, patents are the only things that protect a company from direct competition. If a drug is successful but still protected under a patent, other companies prepare their chemical synthesis manufacturing capabilities to be able to take […]
Not all single payer systems are designed and deployed the same. Varying degrees of private insurance involvement, system funding via taxes, and coverage limits make the system customized to meet the needs of the constituents. Canada is often used as the model example of a single payer system since it shares a border with the […]
The United States has an extremely complex healthcare system that’s comprised of conflicting ideologies. Private insurance, federally-funded Medicare, and state-funded Medicaid are all available for Americans. However, there are still 28 million people who do not have any kind of insurance (Carroll & Frakt, 2017). The positive thing that comes from this mix of systems […]
The largest line item in the 2016 national healthcare budget was $1 trillion for hospital care which comprised of $670 billion for clinician services and $360 billion for drugs (Topol, 2017). Add in the fact that one in four patients are harmed while in the hospital and it’s easy to see that the American Healthcare […]
If the system isn’t entertaining a solution to decrease drug costs, a solution can be implemented to decrease medical costs which will decrease prescription costs. Dr. Barbara McAneny, CEO of the New Mexico Cancer Center, has demonstrated that it’s possible to decrease costs while improving patient care. Appropriately prioritizing care via comprehensive triage and treatment […]
Some argue that it was too much regulation, not too little regulation that has caused the FDA to reject competing drugs due to existing patents. In a sense, this is good so that pharmaceutical companies can recoup R&D costs to create new drugs. On the other hand, the patients need to be able to afford […]
Some critics of industry prices think the high prices are due to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). PBMs are essentially the middleman between the pharmacy and the drug manufacturer. However, as Tim Wentworth, a CEO from Express Scripts states, “Drug makers set prices, and we [the PBM] exist to bring them down” (Weinberg & Langreth, 2017). […]
Looking back in time, it’s mind-boggling to think about how Big Pharma pricing became so far out of control. Insulin therapy, presently in mainstream high supply and demand, used to be a cutting-edge treatment that was difficult to create. The three person team that created a way to generate insulin recognized the need for this […]
A very recent point of contention is the price of Epi-Pens® (Mylan). Epi-Pens® save the lives of people who experience anaphylactic shocks. Due to numerous petitions, Mylan claims that they dropped the price of the Epi-Pen®. But in reality, Mylan simply offered a $300 savings card to underinsured consumers (“The Other 98%”, 2017). Everyone else, […]
The world’s most expensive drug, as of 2016, is Soliris® (Alexion Pharmaceuticals) being priced at $409,500 a year per patient. The disease that this drug treats only affects 8,000 Americans, but the drug maker generated $295 million in one year for that one drug (Herper, 2010). Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of an anti-infection drug […]
During the 2017 transition of political power in America, there were many unanswered questions surrounding the future climate of technology, businesses, and jobs. IBM, a company that has been around for 105 years, has seen many periods of change and uncertainty. Education, IT infrastructure, and healthcare are important passions of IBM. There is no other […]
In the technology circuit, there have been debates and concerning discussions on the implications of robots, or artificial intelligence, gaining abilities and power. Concerns of ethics, privacy, and job availability have stemmed from the increasing abilities of these technologies. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is convinced that Watson and other cognitive computing platforms will not lead […]
The capabilities of IBM’s cognitive system platform, Watson, is endless. IBM is working on developing it as a service that it can sell. It runs on an Application Programming Interface (API) housed in the IBM Public Cloud where users can manipulate the code via system tools (Chafkin, 2016a). Artificial intelligence is just one of the […]
International Business Machines (IBM), also known as “Big Blue”, is a technology company that has been around for a long time and has survived numerous changes in technological trends and advancements. The current CEO, Ginni Rometty, was in the spotlight at the turn of the first quarter of the 21st century. As the first woman […]
Goleman states that there are three kinds of performance-based classifications in a team setting: poorly performing, well performing, and superlative teams. The poorly performing team is limited by its individual average. The well performing team performs above average. But a superlative team performs better than the best member of the team. Superlative teams work synergistically. […]
The “Emotional Intelligence of Leaders”, a piece by Daniel Goleman, explores the association between emotional intelligence and a leader’s ability to effectively manage their organization. Goleman acknowledges that both intelligence and credentials are essential to business management and leadership, but one cannot overlook the importance of empathy and emotions. These latter aspects are needed because […]
Technology seems to operate in a separate universe that doesn’t have to abide by the law. Technology companies are adamant that they are not legally responsible for the harm their services can cause or the activities of their users (“Eroding Exceptionalism”, 2017). Having to monitor their users would be difficult and costly to these companies. […]
Cloud computing is still an ambiguous buzzword. Each major technology company defines it a little differently (Luqmani, 2014). NIST defines cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of computing resources. IBM views cloud computing as cost-efficient model for distributing processes, applications and services while simplifying IT management […]
Who owns the internet? Perhaps the people do as they are the ones generating the content. Perhaps it’s the government of various countries as they have the power to regulate what is able to be published. Countries are adopting different approaches of regulating the internet depending upon their societal and cultural values (Lawrence, Culjak, & […]
“Internet of Things”, “Artificial Intelligence”, and “Big Data” may seem like synonymous, buzzwords on the surface, but in reality, their stark differences allude to their similarities. These three concepts are re-writing how we interact, buy and sell, travel, and make things (Brody, 2016). Products such as 3D printers, smart lightbulbs, smart slow cookers, and smart […]
Adherence to treatment is a major issue in the healthcare field. Technology can help with it. There are many different systems that store medical and nonmedical information. Claim data can be very helpful, but it’s reactive in the sense that it’s historical and occurs after the medical event. Integrating formulary, cost, benefit, and EHR information […]
As companies grow and expand, they acquire and merge with information systems. Each time an additional system gets added or a system’s capabilities expand, the complexities and intricacies subsequently increase. Samuel Arbesman believes that system complexity is not a good or bad thing, but rather an inevitable thing (Lucky, 2017). He believes that everything done […]
The current healthcare system is unsustainable in terms of affordability, quality, accessibility, and personalization. There are three broad tasks that can improve the current system: expand choice, improve affordability and quality, and speed up the conversion of volume to value. Value is important in any business model (Osterwalder, Pigneur, & Clark, 2010). It’s the “difference […]
A Walmart greeter welcomes the customer, engages with him/her, and guides him/her in the right direction. A top health executive for a giant retail chain advocates that this is how health plans should operate (Osbourne, 2016). As health plans sit opportunistically in the middle of patients, doctors, and pharmacists, they’re in the perfect position to […]
One example of a system failure is the American Opioid Epidemic. Health plans commonly make it harder for patients to fill more expensive, less addictive pain management drugs (Volkow, 2016). They do this by requiring prior authorization, quantity limits, and contingent therapies. These restrictive measures are set on the plan’s formulary and essentially drowned prescribers […]
Substance abuse disorders were always undertreated. Although there has been an improvement in treatment due to increased education and research, there is still more that can be done. Only 10% of substance abuse patients receive specialized treatment (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016). Over 40% of patients with a substance abuse disorder also […]
The prescribing of fentanyl is highly regulated by the FDA as it’s a scheduled II drug. This means that it’s rather addictive and subject to abuse. Some pharmaceutical companies are seeking to enter this market by formulating the drug in different forms of administration (ie: spray, injection, oral, etc.). Michael Babich from Insys Therapeutics was […]
In 2017, the FDA restricted the manufacturing of Schedule II Opiates by 25%. Obviously the FDA has a critical role in controlling the manufacturing quotas of Schedule I and II substances. When setting quotas, the institution did their due diligence in reviewing: Estimates of the legitimate medical need Estimates of retail consumption based on prescriptions […]
The American Opioid Epidemic was a major topic of discussion of the twenty-first century. Opioid pain medication was being prescribed left-and-right. Initially, prescribers were being coached to prescribe more pain medication as pain was being greatly undertreated in patients. This was demonstrated in James Campbell’s presidential address of the American Pain Society where he stated […]
Value-based contracting helps hold Big Pharma accountable. If the drug shows a lack of clinical effectiveness and/or results in unreported side effects, the manufacture owes the plan sponsor two-thirds of the drug’s cost. Rishi Manchanda, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of The Wonderful Company, believes that the sequel to the triple aim is the quadruple […]
Biosimilar drugs are identical copies of a product that has an expired patent. They are expected to increase competition and reduce drug prices. Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia have sold dozens of biosimilar drugs for ten years. In the US, prices are expected to drop by 35%. In addition, $80 billion in sales will lose […]
Big Pharma is a dynamic and complex industry. Just a few of the stakeholders include researchers, drug companies, pharmacies, governmental agencies, health plans, doctors, and patients. Agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health, and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have much influence on the pharmaceutical […]
Views on antibiotics have changed over the years. It used to be that the standard was to have doctors prescribe antibiotics for the littlest ailments. Now, doctors are to be more cautious when prescribing antibiotics and only prescribe them if it’s absolutely necessary. For antibiotics, it’s beneficial for pharmaceutical companies to limit the drug’s effectiveness […]
Placebos are commonly viewed as fraud among the general public. Some news stories have said that some drugs that were sold as prescriptions were just milk and sugar. Although it is wrong to sell placebos in place of real drugs, placebos have a great deal of importance in pharmaceutical research. Placebos can make a control […]
The sneaky relationship between researchers and drug companies taint the trials and therefore put the patient in danger. Borison and Diamond, two psychiatrists from the Medical College of Georgia, are in jail because of endangering the safety of multiple patients by tainting trials of over twenty drugs in order to receive hundreds of thousands of […]
Over the past five years, debates about designer drugs have been growing. This new sector’s main focus is to genetically alter drugs so that they are custom for the individual patient. Although in theory this sounds like a health-improving technology, the failure of the multiple companies to agree on a destination and move forward is […]
Big Pharma, the name we collectively attach to all of the drug companies, has been under scrutiny for the past few decades. The government, healthcare institutions, and drug companies collaborate together to supposedly provide us with the finest drugs for our consumption to maintain or improve our health. Peter Coy puts it perfectly, Big Pharma […]
Kratom is a green leaf of a tree of the coffee family. It’s been used for centuries in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The leaf has been gaining popularity in the US, but not for the original use of boosting energy. Taking 2-3 grams of Kratom is said to induce euphoria and reduce pain while not […]
“We’re just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone.” That’s the goal of Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg. I share that vision. Information should not be something that only privileged students or wealthy people have access to. It should be provided to everyone whether it’s in the form of electronic devices or printed material, social […]
We cannot move forward in a positive, productive fashion if we don’t fully understand the present. I aim to paint an accurate, unbiased picture of the present world so that we can decide if we need to move forward as is, or move forward with change. And if we need change, what kind of change […]