The Funding of Orphan Medicines in Europe: Payers Achilles’ Heel?

The Achilles ’ Heel of CyberDefense

The Achilles' Heel of QBF

In recent years we have seen significant progress in the area of Boolean satisfiability (SAT) solving and its applications. As a new challenge, the community is now moving to investigate whether similar advances can be made in the use of Quantified Boolean Formulas (QBF). QBF provides a natural framework for capturing problem solving and planning in multiagent settings. However, contrarily to s...

Cancer's new Achilles' heel?

Claims to the discovery of cancers Achilles’ heel are multiple, even clichéd. Analogies to this Greek myth usually refer to the fall of the undefeatable, yet the novelty behind the legend is that a seemingly immortal foe could be toppled by something so innocuous as his heel. This may be the case for cancer and a non-coding mitochondrial RNA that as yet has no known physiological function or me...

Ideology: Criminology's Achilles' Heel?

Are payers treating orphan drugs differently?

BACKGROUND Some orphan drugs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars annually per patient. As a result, payer sensitivity to the cost of orphan drugs is rising, particularly in light of increased numbers of new launches in recent years. In this article, we examine payer coverage in the United States, England and Wales, and the Netherlands of outpatient orphan drugs approved between 1983 and 2...