Canada needs a national approach to managing its supply of pharmaceutical drugs, starting with a mandatory reporting system for drug shortages, argues an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) and CPJ (Canadian Pharmacists Journal).

Ministers of Health from 194 countries at the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly endorsed a landmark Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a roadmap to prevent millions of deaths by 2020 through more equitable access to existing vaccines for people in all communities.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is accepting applications for Round 9 of its Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, a USD$100 million grant initiative encouraging innovation in global health and development research. Anyone - students, scientists, entrepreneurs - with a transformative idea is invited to submit an easy, online, two-page application.

Increasingly, big pharma is viewing the outsourcing of pharmaceutical manufacturing as a strategic move that would enable them to focus on their core competencies such as R&D. At the same time, the patent expiry of key blockbuster drugs worth $45 billion and biologics worth $30 billion is expected to reduce the capacity utilisation rates of their manufacturing facilities,

GE Healthcare, the healthcare business of GE (NYSE: GE) and M+W Group, a leading global engineering, construction and project management company, have formed a strategic alliance aimed at overcoming the lack of key biopharmaceuticals, especially in emerging nations.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced it is contributing a massive database of chemical data extracted from millions of patents and scientific literature to the National Institutes of Health. This contribution will allow researchers to more easily visualize important relationships among chemical compounds to aid in drug discovery and support advanced cancer research.

Springer Healthcare, part of Springer Science+Business Media, has signed an extensive three-year reprints and sales agreement effective 1 January 2012 with the American Society of Clinical Oncology® (ASCO), the world's leading professional organization representing physicians who care for people with cancer.