Drug procurement

Vidal BA. Drug procurement responsibilities [Letter], Hosp. Pharm. 1998 33 918. 

To be effective, a small drug regulatory authority needs to operate within the context of a defined national drugs policy and to interrelate with other interested bodies, including organizations responsible for drug procurement in the public sector and the national formulary committee, where such exists. 

Public drug procurement payments can be made in at least in three ways advance payment, cash on delivery or credit terms. Each of these payment modes affects the manufacturers cash flows, cost of finance and eventually the cost of manufacturing pharmaceuticals. The payment terms can be a source of finance for the firm to use in the production process, or they can cause the producer to seek external expensive finance whilst awaiting payment for goods produced and delivered for periods ranging up to six months. 

Taxol s journey to the clinic was slow and arduous. Initial difficulties with aqueous solubility and lack of knowledge regarding its mechanism, of action delayed its development until 1979 when, in another seminal paper in the field, S.B.Horwitz and her collaborators disclosed their findings on the interaction of taxol with microtubules.4 Taxol s unique biological action, which includes promotion of microtubule formation and microtubule stabilization, stimulated a renewed interest in taxol as a potential drug candidate. The problem of procuring adequate supplies of taxol became even... 

During the high-dose transition, the intense euphoria associated with the rush leads to profound conditioning of associated abuse behaviors not only are the injection behaviors highly conditioned to the circumstances surrounding the injections, but the behaviors leading up to the procurement of the drug and the preparation prior to injection are also conditioned (Ellinwood 1973). 

In Section VI survey evidence about the response of private investment in R D to changes in economic incentives. Evidence about a number of policies (including R D tax credits, intellectual property, defense procurement, and the Orphan Drug Act) and events suggests that private vaccine development and production is likely to be quite responsive to enhanced incentives (or diminished disincentives), and that expansion of the government s role is likely to crowd out private investment. Conclusions are presented in Section VI. 

Safety measures. 3. United States—Armed Forces—Medical supplies. 4. United States. Dept, of Defense—Procurement. 5. United States. Food and Drug Administration. 1. Brower, Jennifer, 1967- II. Yaniv, Orlie. III.Title. 

Third, as the anthrax vaccine experience reveals, both DoD acquisition personnel and the contractors hired by DoD have not always possessed the technical and managerial expertise for working with FDA. Interactions with FDA, especially in licensing-related efforts, involve a complicated three-way relationship among DoD, the private contractor, and FDA. This relationship is quite unlike either the two-way relationship between DoD and defense contractors involved in the procurement of weapon systems or the two-way interaction between FDA and a private drug firm. The policy and operational issues about how to manage these three-way relationships have yet to be worked out. 

From a clinical point of view, drug taking is a complex behavior that involves consciousness and deliberate actions. The drug taker has to procure the drug or accept an offer. Consumption further involves a varied set of actions and procedures. This behavior clearly involves series of choices. The puzzling question is, therefore, why any individual continues to make what he or she—and certainly we—judge to be poor choices, choices of regret and poor net result. 

Patient started at the age of 17 with morphine, which he continued for 20 years, always taking it by mouth. Morphine, when he first started, could be procured by going to the drug store and buying 10 grains for 10 cents. 

---