Pharmacy Technology

MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — Upsher-Smith Labs on Monday introduced a new educational program created for patients living with seizure clusters, as well as their families and friends. The initiative — called Seizure Clusters Connect — uses traditional and social media to offer patients and their caregivers a community for learning and support.

READING, Mass. — Physicians Interactive, a provider of online and mobile clinical resources and solutions for healthcare professionals, and McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions, a provider of pharmaceutical manufacturer-sponsored patient adherence programs, on Tuesday announced a collaboration to jointly deliver Coupons on Demand. The new solution is designed to provide clinicians convenient access to medication cost-savings offers and adherence support through a patented web-based platform.  

EWING, N.J. — Church & Dwight on Tuesday announced that the Food and Drug Administration has cleared the First Response Gold Digital Pregnancy Test to determine if a woman is pregnant up to six days before her missed period and with more than 99% accuracy from the day of her expected period. In addition, the First Response Early Result Pregnancy Test, which was previously cleared to determine if a woman is pregnant up to six days before her missed period, also has been FDA-cleared to detect pregnancy with more than 99% accuracy from the day of her expected period. 

CINCINNATI — Procter & Gamble’s Oral-B has announced the launch of an oral care app for children — the Disney Magic Timer App by Oral-B.

Created in collaboration with Disney and powered by DreamPlay, the oral care app is designed to helps kids increase brushing time, which is identified by dentists as an area of concern and improvement for children.

NEW YORK — Verizon’s Converged Health Management, a remote patient-monitoring medical platform designed to help clinicians and patients manage patients’ health in between doctor visits, recently received Food and Drug Administration 510(k) clearance to run on the iOS mobile operating system, Verizon announced Tuesday. 

Patients and clinicians now will be able to access Verizon’s solution on their iPhones and can use their iPads to access the Converged Health Management portal.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Healtheway on Monday announced the formation of Carequality, a new initiative dedicated to accelerating progress in health data exchange among multiplatform networks, healthcare providers, electronic health record vendors and health information exchange vendors. Carequality is an open, transparent and inclusive industry-driven effort. It will convene stakeholders and facilitate industry consensus to develop and maintain a standards-based interoperability framework that enables information exchange between and among networks.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — SpartanNash on Tuesday announced the formation of a partnership to offer a comprehensive mobile and web pharmacy solution to SpartanNash customers. The mobile solution, powered by mscripts, will enable SpartanNash customers to refill prescriptions, receive pickup and dosage reminders, and manage accounts for their family members. 

SpartanNash operates 88 pharmacies in six states throughout the upper Midwest.

ORLANDO, Fla. — CommonWell Health Alliance, the health information technology vendor-led interoperability effort, announced on Monday that CVS Caremark has joined as one of the newest contributing members of the organization.

CVS Caremark joins founding members Allscripts, Athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, Greenway, McKesson and Sunquest and service provider RelayHealth in the Alliance's work.