As a student of pharmaceutical or life sciences (or anyone interested in how science is bettering our world), you will inevitably learn about the latest High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) techniques and how they fit into different industries. At this point, HPLC is an established technique dating back to the early twentieth century, but over the decades, the process has been refined and simplified. It has evolved from a multi-unit process to a standardized procedure with a single piece of laboratory equipment. HPLC works differently that traditional liquid chromatography because it uses a man-made high-pressure process instead of gravity to.. READ MORE »
We’ve talked extensively about pharmaceutical careers, but it’s important not to forget one of the other job paths at AAPS: Food safety training for food preparation and manufacturing. Every living person eats. As a result, food safety is a concern for everyone, at every level of the process, from first production to kitchen and all the way to the plate. It is unlikely that you would find a restaurant without food safety certification. In Canada, federal level regulation comes from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, while individual provinces and municipalities prefer to add their own oversight. Food quality assurance and.. READ MORE »
We’ve talked a lot about what’s going on in the pharmaceutical industry, in Canada and in the world, but now we’re going to take it back to you, and look at some of the tips that will help you launch and grow your pharmaceutical career. Defining Your Goal– While it’s possible to launch a career with no clear direction plan; you’ll spend your time and effort more efficiently if you have an idea where to go. At AAPS, we pride ourselves on our industry experience, so our faculty can help you get started. But, asides from that, you need to.. READ MORE »
Astellas Pharma Canada has launched a BC campaign to build public awareness of their new incontinence treatments. Although both drugs are approved for sale in the country, currently neither has the approval for subsidy by BC’s Pharmacare. Rather than reaching out to the government via direct lobbying, Astellas is trying another solution and has launched a nationwide incontinence awareness campaign, “It’s Urgent” While every drug that’s approved in Canada can be sold in Canadian pharmacies, what the average consumer does not know is that not all pharmaceuticals are equally subsidized. Because Canadian health care is the responsibility of the province,.. READ MORE »
China announces it is deepening its ongoing fraud investigation into the pharmaceutical industry. The probe seeks to make the Chinese market more competitive, removing corruption from the system to ensure that China’s standards for pharmaceuticals match the rest of the developed world. Although revelations of bribery and regulation evasion sound like a PR nightmare, in practice, it is part of the necessary growing pains to encourage more companies to invest in the country. While many major pharmaceutical companies have offices in the world’s most populous nation, including Eli Lily, Astra Zenca and Pfizer, and have had established footholds for decades,.. READ MORE »
For the pharmaceutical industry, small, lean and agile research firms are the growing trend. Research in the life sciences, as in the cutting edge of any field in Canada, follows a complicated path of private and government investment that mixes for-profit companies with public universities. In this trend, while the big players in the pharmaceutical industry continue to help steer the development of new drugs by providing a large amount of the capital and guidance for the emerging technology, the actual muscle behind the laboratory and clinical research is coming from independent labs with less than 100 people, which makes.. READ MORE »
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine) jobs are generally considered to be a vital part of the economy, and one of the hottest sectors for employment and education investment. As an added bonus, STEM offers a unique chance for female researchers and inventors to be on the cutting edge of this century’s new discoveries. Biological and life sciences are experiencing a global boom. From newer and better life extending and improving treatments and technologies, to expanding the understanding of the human body and its potential, medical technology that was science fiction a decade ago is taken for granted. Discoveries in.. READ MORE »
A new drug regulation was recently announced in Canada, this time controlling the packaging. That’s the Plain Language Labelling Initiative, which will be an overhaul of how drugs are described on their boxes and bottles. This new initiative aims at altering guidelines for better clarity. While pharmaceutical quality control can ensure that the contents of a package provide exactly the results they’re supposed to, it’s of equal importance to make sure healthcare professionals and consumers are also picking the right products. That means universal standards to prevent confusion between very similarly named or packaged drugs, oversight that is expected to.. READ MORE »
At the end of May, four companies announced a recall on five drugs commonly sold in Canada. The recall is not about a problem with the medications themselves, as a treatment. Amlodipine, ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, lamotrigine and telmisartan are all still considered to be safe and effective in their own right. Instead, the recall affects only certain batches and lot numbers. This issue provides a case study for pharmaceutical quality control from the manufacturing side of things. No pharmaceutical company wants the bad publicity of a recall, but this incident also shows the necessary redundancies in pharmaceutical quality assurance. In this.. READ MORE »
According to the 2011 study by the CACDS (Canadian Association of Chain Drug Stores), 42% of pharmacies in Canada offer “expanded services”. Broadly speaking, this means that pharmacies within the community offer other healthcare services in addition to dispensing prescriptions. This might be anything from weight management assistance to services for patients with depression and chronic illnesses, or it might even include specialty services like home visits or geriatric care. Among the most popular expanded services are smoking cessation assistance, diabetes maintenance and medication management. Expanded services are more common in pharmacies located in urban areas than in rural areas.. READ MORE »
