Analysis of the Professional Aspects of Medical Drugs Industry in the Republic of Serbia in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic

The research subject of this paper is the analysis of the attitudes of employees in pharmaceutical companies towards the business aspects of the pharmaceutical industry during and after the end of the pandemic in the Republic of Serbia. The aim is to examine the differences in the attitudes of employees, as well as to determine which variables predict the situations of endangering the professional reputation of pharmaceutical companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research was conducted by means of a survey during 2021 on a sample of 27 innovative and generic pharmaceutical companies. We used the SPSS program for descriptive statistics analysis, chi square test and binary logistic regression models. The findings show that there is a statistically significant difference in the expressed attitudes of employees in innovative and generic pharmaceutical companies in terms of coming to the office during the pandemic;the lack of medicines and medical devices used in the treatment of COVID-19 infections;the patient access to a chosen doctor;the expectations of the employees to continue working from home after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of the binary regression models show the slowdown in the supply chain, the access to doctors and working from the home office have not been perceived as creating situations of endangering professional reputations, that is, they contribute to the sustainable economic success. On the other hand, the introduction of digital technologies decreases the occurrence of conditions in which their professional reputation has been threatened.

Highlighting the Challenges in the Development, Funding, and Reimbursement of Medical Innovations from a Developer Perspective

Healthcare system is an essential system for any nation as it is responsible for maintaining the health of the individuals and public. However, the outbreak of different viral diseases such as influenza, covid-19 etc. has encouraged medical research in different developing and developed countries. Similarly, in Malaysia, different public and private research centers and biotechnology firms are being promoted to develop new and innovative medical drugs and equipment. However, different challenges are faced by the developers in promoting the development and innovations of medical commodities. Thus, this study was conducted to investigate different challenges in the development, funding, and reimbursement of medical innovations in Malaysia. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 7 developers from different public research and development (R&D) centers and biotechnology firms in Malaysia. After the interviews were conducted, their edited transcription was obtained, and thematic analysis was conducted, and different themes and sub-themes were formulated. The results obtained from this study showed that the lack of innovative environment, strategic compliances and effective funding structure negatively influences medical innovations in Malaysia. It has also been observed that poor reimbursement practices and policies and lack of pricing strategies by the Malaysian government impacts the ROI of the associated firms and developers. Thus, it has been recommended that mega-funds and reimbursement policies should be promoted to overcome these challenges in medical innovations.Copyright © 2023 ThinkBiotech LLC. All rights reserved.

Intellectual property rights in outer space: How can pharmaceutical companies protect COVID-19 vaccine and immunotherapy developments aboard the ISS US national laboratory?

Believing that space pharmaceuticals might be the key to winning the battle against COVID-19, global pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Sanofi Pasteur are currently collaborating with the International Space Station National Laboratory (ISS-NL) on research projects aiming to develop vaccine-and-immunotherapy products. The present legal regime for outer space, however, does not provide clear guidelines on safeguarding intellectual property rights (IPRs), due to the difficulties of reconciling the territorial nature of patent law and the nonterritorial nature of space law. Responding to such a legal gap, this research paper argues how pharmaceutical companies can protect such medical innovations by taking into consideration the international principles of space law addressing IPRs and extraterrestrial jurisdiction, as well as the legal regime of the ISS-NL. With the exception of the possibility of the barriers between the two areas of law not being insurmountable, the proposed COVID-19 TRIPS Waiver furthermore impacts space pharmaceuticals' IPRs and commercialization, which leads to the identification of some advantageous forms of agreements, including the Joint Endeavor Agreement, the Space Act Agreement, as well as the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, for pharmaceutical companies defined as agreement partners with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An Overlooked Strategic Powerhouse: How Nurses Can Rise to the Challenge of Integrating Public Health and Primary Care

Although the United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and a leader in biomedical innovation, its health care system is consistently ranked among the worst in terms of cost and health outcomes. Americans have short life expectancies, high infant mortality and obesity rates, and soaring chronic disease rates compared with other wealthy nations. In 2021, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) was charged with examining what it would take to improve US primary care. The NAM report described the practice of siloing public health from primary care or treating these areas as separate fields of scientific inquiry, practice, and billable service.1 NAM identified this separation as a key driver of poor health outcomes and health inequities in the United States. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) examined similar phenomena in a 2012 report, noting how the two fields tend to operate independently, despite complementary functions and common goals.2Where these silos persist, we see communication and process breakdowns at the point of care. For instance, when large swaths of Americans turned to trusted primary care providers for COVID-19 vaccine insights, their primary care providers did not always have the most up-todate information, in part because of a lack of interprofessional cohesion (including fragmented public health messaging and data systems). If we are to remedy such issues, a substantive paradigm shift must take place: We must move toward what DeSalvo et al.3 termed "Public Health 3.0." In this model, multiple sectors, specialties, and stakeholders form coalitions to mobilize data, people power, and resources in a strategic manner to advance health for all. To be truly strategic, we must think carefully about how to leverage nurses-who care for patients across the lifespan and in nearly all public health nursing (PHN) and primary care settings-within these coalitions.The 2021 NAM report urges health care teams to undertake the mission of integrating systems. However, NAM stops short of describing exactly how teams ought to accomplish this aim and the proposed makeup ofsaid teams. Like any group project, success will depend on the ability of teams to identify leaders and clearly delineate responsibilities. The purpose of this editorial is to explore the potential of PHN and primary care nurses and to describe the roles they might assume in the collaborative integration of their respective silos.

Patients Are Humans Too: The Emergence of Medical Humanities

This essay describes the origins, growth, and transformation of the medical humanities over the past six decades, drawing on the insights of ethicists, physicians, historians, patients, activists, writers, and literature scholars who participated in building the field. The essay traces how the original idea of "humanizing physicians" evolved and how crises from death and dying, to AIDS and COVID-19, expanded humanistic inquiry into health, illness, and the human condition. It examines how a wide array of scholars, professional organizations, disciplinary approaches, academic units, and intellectual agendas came to define the vibrant field. This remarkable growth offers a counterpoint to narratives of decline in the humanities. It is a story of growing relevance shaped by tragedy, of innovative programs in medical schools and on undergraduate campuses, and vital new configurations of ethics, literature, the arts, and history that breathed new life into the study of health and medicine.

A Review on Current Designation of Metallic Nanocomposite Hydrogel in Biomedical Applications

In the past few decades, nanotechnology has been receiving significant attention globally and is being continuously developed in various innovations for diverse applications, such as tissue engineering, biotechnology, biomedicine, textile, and food technology. Nanotechnological materials reportedly lack cell-interactive properties and are easily degraded into unfavourable products due to the presence of synthetic polymers in their structures. This is a major drawback of nanomaterials and is a cause of concern in the biomedicine field. Meanwhile, particulate systems, such as metallic nanoparticles (NPs), have captured the interest of the medical field due to their potential to inhibit the growth of microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, and viruses). Lately, researchers have shown a great interest in hydrogels in the biomedicine field due to their ability to retain and release drugs as well as to offer a moist environment. Hence, the development and innovation of hydrogel-incorporated metallic NPs from natural sources has become one of the alternative pathways for elevating the efficiency of therapeutic systems to make them highly effective and with fewer undesirable side effects. The objective of this review article is to provide insights into the latest fabricated metallic nanocomposite hydrogels and their current applications in the biomedicine field using nanotechnology and to discuss the limitations of this technology for future exploration. This article gives an overview of recent metallic nanocomposite hydrogels fabricated from bioresources, and it reviews their antimicrobial activities in facilitating the demands for their application in biomedicine. The work underlines the fabrication of various metallic nanocomposite hydrogels through the utilization of natural sources in the production of biomedical innovations, including wound healing treatment, drug delivery, scaffolds, etc. The potential of these nanocomposites in relation to their mechanical strength, antimicrobial activities, cytotoxicity, and optical properties has brought this technology into a new dimension in the biomedicine field. Finally, the limitations of metallic nanocomposite hydrogels in terms of their methods of synthesis, properties, and outlook for biomedical applications are further discussed.