Business
Trump’s FDA Might Greenlight Drug-Prescribing Apps for Chronic Ailments
Mobile devices could give consumers easier access to crucial medications and boost name-brand pharmaceuticals.
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Smartphones have revolutionized many aspects of modern life, from trading stocks to taking photos to hailing a cab. The next big task for the diminutive devices may be a more serious one: determining whether patients would benefit from treatments for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and cholesterol and then granting them access to such drugs.
U.S. health officials expect to propose in the first half of 2019 a plan that would limit the need for potentially millions of people to interact with a doctor and instead allow them to use their phone to determine their need for, say, Pfizer Inc.’s cholesterol-fighter Lipitor—and then give them a code or ticket to pick it up on their pharmacy’s shelf, next to the aspirin and cough syrup.