INSIGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES

 WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — It appears that even when the economy gets back to humming on all cylinders that America’s shopping patterns will have been forever changed, and that's only going to support dollar store growth for years to come. Clearly, the two biggest competitors in Family Dollar and Dollar General are ramping up store growth all over the country, with the two companies lining up on opposite corners much the way drug chains began had done in the '80s and '90s.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — One of the most common reasons that retailers give for pet-medication programs is that pets are part of the family.

As analyst Debbie Wang of investment firm Morningstar told Drug Store News in April 2012, more empty nesters and young couples putting off having children are driving increases in pet ownership, and with that comes a need for pet healthcare.

BENSALEM, Pa. — Thirteen million more Americans had health insurance in June 2012 than 18 months earlier, according to a new report by BusinessOne Technologies, a healthcare technology and data company.

RIDGEFIELD, Conn. — A drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes produced significant reduction in blood sugar in African-American patients, according to results of a late-stage clinical trial.

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly announced Thursday results of a phase-3 trial of Tradjenta (linagliptin) in which 226 patients with Type 2 diabetes received 5 mg of the drug once per day or placebo.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — Adherence interventions targeted to nonadherent patients proved more effective in improving medication adherence when compared with broad interventions that cast a wide net to encompass all medication takers, according to new research sponsored by CVS Caremark.

According to the study, entitled "Targeting Cardiovascular Medication Adherence Interventions,” more than one-third of adherence interventions targeted to nonadherent patients resulted in improved medication adherence, compared with 18% of broad interventions.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — At the start of the article titled "Retail Clinics and Drug store Medicine" published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, author Christine Cassell, a physician, acknowledges that retail-based clinics have been "criticized in some quarters" but states that, despite this, the clinics have experienced success by patient satisfaction and quality scores. The fact that this message is coming from a physician makes it especially important.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — The Retail Employees with Disabilities Initiative certainly is a noble cause, but more than that, this is a prime example of Walgreens' active pursuit of an experience with its audience through the mediums that that audience chooses — in this case, Twitter. It represents a new paradigm in marketing as drug retailers and others swap a consumer reach and brand identity proposition for one of engagement and presence.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — The $317 billion problem of medication nonadherence has many sources that often combine and overlap in complex ways. But fears of whether a drug is safe and will work are among of the most frequently cited reasons why patients don't take their drugs as prescribed, or don't take them at all.