Pharmaceuticals and Public Policy: A Look Ahead

Author(s):  
Stuart O. Schweitzer ◽  
Z. John Lu

Recognizing that the past often does not predict the future well, this chapter nevertheless offers prescience for the pharmaceutical industry in the next five to ten years. Using the standard economics paradigm of supply, demand, and market equilibrium, it considers the future of the industry in the following aspects: industrial organization, the nascent biosimilar sector, the promise of personalized medicine and digital healthcare information, artificial intelligence, the prospects for outpatient bundled payment programs, the setting of pharmaceutical prices, and the role of the FDA. The most important among them will be the scope and nature of health care reform in the United States and the jurisdiction of the FDA in the coming years.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Palanica ◽  
Yan Fossat

The current study was a replication and comparison of our previous research which examined the comprehension accuracy of popular intelligent virtual assistants, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri for recognizing the generic and brand names of the top 50 most dispensed medications in the United States. Using the exact same voice recordings from 2019, audio clips of 46 participants were played back to each device in 2021. Google Assistant achieved the highest comprehension accuracy for both brand medication names (86.0%) and generic medication names (84.3%), followed by Apple Siri (brand names = 78.4%, generic names = 75.0%), and the lowest accuracy by Amazon Alexa (brand names 64.2%, generic names = 66.7%). These findings represent the same trend of results as our previous research, but reveal significant increases of ~10–24% in performance for Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri over the past 2 years. This indicates that the artificial intelligence software algorithms have improved to better recognize the speech characteristics of complex medication names, which has important implications for telemedicine and digital healthcare services.


2001 ◽  
Vol 77 (6) ◽  
pp. 985-988
Author(s):  
Ian de la Roche ◽  
Christopher Gaston

The Canadian wood products industry continues to have an overwhelming reliance on commodity sales to the United States housing market. The industry has extracted attractive profits from this approach in the past, first by taking advantage of abundant, inexpensive old-growth fibre and then by investing in cost-minimizing technologies. But like all investments on inputs for production, diminishing returns have been reached and new solutions must be sought to recapture competitiveness and profitability into the future. This paper addresses this challenge by focusing on the role of research and development and the transition into a sustainable, knowledge-based industry. Key words: Canadian forest industry at the crossroads, productivity, competitiveness, knowledge-based, role of research and development


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-152
Author(s):  
Tricia Cusack

This article considers nineteenth-century riverscapes of the Hudson in relation to the formation of American identity. It argues that riverscapes in the United States contributed to welding a national identity to a Christian one, although officially the identities were distinct. I examine the role of the Hudson River School in the creation of the ‘wilderness’ as an image of American homeland, and how this construct incorporated the iconic figure of the Euro-American Christian ‘pilgrim-pioneer.’ America looked more to the future than to the past for its national narrative, and an orientation to the future was symbolized in art by the flow of the Hudson toward distant horizons, while the pioneer identity was extended to embrace the entrepreneur-developer. The pioneer has remained an iconic figure for American nationalism, but is now more firmly located in the nation’s past; Janus’s gaze has been adjusted, demonstrating the potentially fluid character of nationalist discourse.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pham Van Loi

Vietnam - Laos has more than 2,000 km of common national borders. The coherent relationship between the two nations and the inhabitants of the two countries has been formed and fostered in history and especially developed over the past 7 decades. The Thai ethnic group in Vietnam has over one million people, residing permanently, concentrated in the Northwest region, the region consists of 8 provinces, of which 4 provinces have the Vietnam-Laos border crossing. This paper focuses on clarifying the practical basis for the Thai people to play a role in the traditional Vietnam-Laos friendship and propose some solutions to promote the role of Thai in maintaining, developing the traditional friendship between Vietnam and Laos, now and in the future.


Author(s):  
Mahesh K. Joshi ◽  
J.R. Klein

The world of work has been impacted by technology. Work is different than it was in the past due to digital innovation. Labor market opportunities are becoming polarized between high-end and low-end skilled jobs. Migration and its effects on employment have become a sensitive political issue. From Buffalo to Beijing public debates are raging about the future of work. Developments like artificial intelligence and machine intelligence are contributing to productivity, efficiency, safety, and convenience but are also having an impact on jobs, skills, wages, and the nature of work. The “undiscovered country” of the workplace today is the combination of the changing landscape of work itself and the availability of ill-fitting tools, platforms, and knowledge to train for the requirements, skills, and structure of this new age.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 834
Author(s):  
Magbool Alelyani ◽  
Sultan Alamri ◽  
Mohammed S. Alqahtani ◽  
Alamin Musa ◽  
Hajar Almater ◽  
...  

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad, umbrella term that encompasses the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence. The aim of this study is to assess the radiology community’s attitude in Saudi Arabia toward the applications of AI. Methods: Data for this study were collected using electronic questionnaires in 2019 and 2020. The study included a total of 714 participants. Data analysis was performed using SPSS Statistics (version 25). Results: The majority of the participants (61.2%) had read or heard about the role of AI in radiology. We also found that radiologists had statistically different responses and tended to read more about AI compared to all other specialists. In addition, 82% of the participants thought that AI must be included in the curriculum of medical and allied health colleges, and 86% of the participants agreed that AI would be essential in the future. Even though human–machine interaction was considered to be one of the most important skills in the future, 89% of the participants thought that it would never replace radiologists. Conclusion: Because AI plays a vital role in radiology, it is important to ensure that radiologists and radiographers have at least a minimum understanding of the technology. Our finding shows an acceptable level of knowledge regarding AI technology and that AI applications should be included in the curriculum of the medical and health sciences colleges.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Jamie McKeown

This article reports the findings from a study of discursive representations of the future role of technology in the work of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC). Specifically, it investigates the interplay of ‘techno-optimism’ (a form of ideological bias) and propositional certainty in the NIC’s ‘Future Global Trends Reports’. In doing so, it answers the following questions: To what extent was techno-optimism present in the discourse? What level of propositional certainty was expressed in the discourse? How did the discourse deal with the inherent uncertainty of the future? Overall, the discourse was pronouncedly techno-optimist in its stance towards the future role of technology: high-technological solutions were portrayed as solving a host of problems, despite the readily available presence of low-technology or no-technology solutions. In all, 75.1% of the representations were presented as future categorical certainties, meaning the future was predominantly presented as a known and closed inevitability. The discourse dealt with the inherent uncertainty of the subject matter, that is, the future, by projecting the past and present into the future. This was particularly the case in relation to the idea of technological military dominance as a guarantee of global peace, and the role of technology as an inevitable force free from societal censorship.


2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Drayton

The contemporary historian, as she or he speaks to the public about the origins and meanings of the present, has important ethical responsibilities. ‘Imperial’ historians, in particular, shape how politicians and the public imagine the future of the world. This article examines how British imperial history, as it emerged as an academic subject since about 1900, often lent ideological support to imperialism, while more generally it suppressed or avoided the role of violence and terror in the making and keeping of the Empire. It suggests that after 2001, and during the Iraq War, in particular, a new Whig historiography sought to retail a flattering narrative of the British Empire’s past, and concludes with a call for a post-patriotic imperial history which is sceptical of power and speaks for those on the underside of global processes.


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