WakeMed Key Community Care Teams Up With UnitedHealthcare To Improve Patient Care Across The Triangle

UnitedHealth also extends behavioral health services to storm victims.

Wakemed Key Community Care (WKCC), a division of WakeMed Health & Hospitals, along with WakeMed Physician Practices and Key Physicians, have join hands with UnitedHealthcare (NYSE:UNH) to improve care coordination while enhancing  health services for residents of the Triangle area in North Carolina, for those who are enrolled in the UnitedHealthcare’s employer sponsored health plans. These enrollments will be eligible to be provided with healthcare from a WKCC primary physician.

The new accountable care relationship service is expected to take effect in the next few days, i.e. June 1^st 2015.Through this partnership, it will help to integrate valuable health care resources to better support the residents across the Triangle area. WKCC has been part of the Medicare Shared Savings Program, which was launched earlier this year. The program provides access of health services to approximately 400 patients.

The benefits that patients will receive range from routine check up to disease management or to an unexpected trip to the emergency department from accident victims. This program will also help to expand on the range of opportunities for care providers, including proactive services, i.e. providing patients with preventive methods of health care, such as the use of immunizations, tools, and materials to inform patients on methods to manage their health, and most importantly to help patients to be treated at the optimum place and time.

According to John Rubino, M.D., WKCC chairman, the WakeMed Key Community Care’s new dimension of its working relationship with United Healthcare will help to bring about a shift in health care system of North Carolina in which rewards are directed to those who maintain and provide quality and value, despite of the number of procedures that have been performed.

United Healthcare has committed to take the relationship much deeper and more collaborative with physicians and patients in not only in North Carolina, but also the whole of the US, since it also conducts around 520 more accountable care programs in other states and districts too.

In a separate news, UnitedHealth Group subsidiary has offered to provide free emotional and counseling support for the victims of the recent storms that had covered Texas and Oklahoma. United Healthcare’s partners with behavioral health company, Optum is also opening up emotional support line to provide ‘help services’ for those who are having difficulty in coping with the aftermath of the recent storms.

United Healthcare stock price ended the day at $119.45, a gain of more than 1%.

Samsung Foldable Smartphone Expected To Debut This Year

Samsung ambitious plans to work on a foldable smartphone, which might hit the market by the end of this year.

Samsung Group is not holding back! The company, once again, has become the largest smartphone vendor in the world. The South Korean smartphone maker took over Apple, who was the uncrowned king of the industry.

Samsung miserably failed during and after the launch of its Samsung Galaxy S5 model last year. This resulted in Apple and other companies overtaking the market share of Samsung. However, the company made a good comeback with Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge model. It further plans to launch an Iron Man limited edition for its Edge version.

The latest Samsung update stated that the company is all set to work on a foldable dual screen smartphone. Samsung vendor has already gained immense traction with its flagship devices. Now, the company’s new project, which is a different and new device, is code named as ‘Valley’. According to the details that have been disclosed so far suggests that the Project Valley is in the infancy stages of development but the company’s plans are quite ambitious.

However, it is still not confirmed whether it is a prototype on which the company wishes to continue development till the final good product or terminate it at any time. It is believed that Samsung foldable phone with two display screens is expected to launch by the end of this year.

Many rumors have now gathered pace as Samsung has unveiled few prototypes regarding this smartphone. Moreover, it has also emerged in videos as well as dummies so far.

Market sources stated, “The device which Samsung is eyeing to launch is expected to support multiple gestures for switching between its two screens, and the fact that it is codenamed Project V/Valley suggest it could be a foldable device (the letter V is similar in shape to what a valley would look like, and it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to think the phone could feature two sides that fold together).”

Samsung was interested in working on a foldable device, but there were speculations before this year that it would release them by 2016. If the rumors about the company releasing these devices this year are true, then it will have to be very hard on work to be able to complete it.

As it has now reclaimed its number one position in the industry, the corporate giant wants to maintain the same momentum and sustain its market status over a long term.

Samsung Revealed its New Plans for Battery and Camera Sensors in its future devices

Samsung via a public presentation disclosed that its targeting for slimmer batteries and camera sensors.

Samsung Group in a public presentation disclosed its future product plans, which involves slimming down mobile batteries and making it more long lasting than ever. The Korean mobile manufacturer will also be working on camera sensors in order to make it slim.

Samsung Group has mentioned that its present batteries have 700 Wh/l (Watt hour per liter) of density, and the company is planning to change them into 750 Wh/l by the end of the year 2016. The company also plans to enhance that density to almost 780 Wh/l. The Korean company schemes to include these new batteries in all its upcoming products, mostly in its smartphone flagships. However, one major concern for the company will also be its smart watches flagship, as the wearable gadget is gaining more and more admiration internationally.

The South Korean company also declared that it will be emphasizing on camera sensors, slimming down the size of pixel from 1.12 microns to nearly 1, which means the upcoming cameras of the company will be congealed to 5 mm from previous 6.5 mm especially on 16 mega pixels camera. Reducing the pixels of camera sensor does specify that the images quality will be impacted. In order to solve the problem, Samsung Galaxy also announced that it is actively working on modifying the camera sensors to Red, White Blue (RWB), which is going to brighten up the quality of the images once again.

Samsung Elect’s latest battery plans will also reprieve those who are tangled regarding company’s decision to carry on with non-removable batteries or not. Their addition in the new flagship of S6 Edger and S6 smartphones shows that the company was all done making the eminent removable batteries, about which its smartphones were famous for. The company also declared that it will also be focusing on how to make its “fast charging” feature better than before, as the firm targets to provide their users almost 80% charge in approximately half an hour.

Samsung group has disclosed that it be working on these items explicitly, and optimistically the company will finish these tasks in the given time, or may be before that. The company has proved its worth and potential already, but till them customers will have to wait for more official announcements by the company.

In separate news, Samsung has also filed a patent related to a hybrid device, which will combine the smartphone and phablets technology with laptop, and will also include 2 operating systems inside same device.  

Amazon Drone Delivery Service Will Deliver Your Package Anywhere

Amazon new patent application will deliver products to customer at their instant location.

Amazon, Inc. is currently the reigning monarch of American online shopping. The company is the e-commerce giant in the domestic and international markets. It has expanded its global footprints to many countries, hence does great business as an online retailer now. Apart from this, the company has also bolstered its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, which is a massive $5 billion business now. Recently, the company has been pushing in for internet of things (IoT) and connectivity within devices.
Amazon recently started Drone Delivery services in order to speed up the delivery process of product orders to customers. The company started with a 1-hour program and a 2-hour program for this purpose. When it comes to delivering the product, the online retailer is trying everything to either speed up the delivery process to reduce the waiting time for customers or make the process convenient for them. Therefore, ‘AMZN' announced to deliver product directly to your ‘trunk' a couple of weeks ago. It has full rights from FAA to make it operational.
It is known that the ecommerce giant seeks to make the delivery process convenient through innovative and unconventional methods. The trunk delivery system was planned, however only in Germany for the time being, so that customers can receive their packages even if they are not at home. Now, the organization is planning a system to deliver packages wherever customers are present.
Reports suggest that the company is planning to ‘create a fleet' on drones that will be delivering products not only to customers' homes and workplaces but wherever they happen to be standing at that very instance. According to CNN, the company will name this service as "Bring It To Me". This delivery option will become a trademark Amazon patent application that will deliver products to you with a single click.
The ecommerce giant explains how this patent application works by stating an example where a user placed an order that is expected to be delivered to him within the next 30 minutes. The order is placed at his home but the next moment he plans to go to his friend's place. The company says, "As the ordered item is retrieved from inventory, the current location of the user's mobile device may be determined and the delivery location correspondingly updated. As such, the ordered item will be delivered to the user while the user is at their friend's house, or any other location."
The online business has it all planned to make user experience better and provide customers with the best possible option to receive their packages.

Pfizer And GlaxoSmithKline Merger On The Cards

Pfizer and Glaxo merger is said to be the most prominent in the healthcare sector.

Undoubtedly, Pfizer Inc. is the one of the most prominent names out of many pharmaceutical companies in the health care industry. The company’s main objective is to work for a healthier, disease free, and a safe world. It operates its business by producing and selling drugs all across the globe and it has many successful medicines on its portfolio as well.

In previous times, the company tried a lot to acquire AstraZeneca, but failed. However, it managed to sustain and strengthen itself in the market. The latest news suggests that the merger between Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline is on the cards now.

Rumors started to gather pace regarding Pfizer’s interest to take over its UK-based rival GlaxoSmithKline. This has to be very big news in the health care sector and hence Deutsche Bank’s analyst, Gregg Gilbert, has further ignited fire in these rumors.

Mr. Gilbert has placed a dollar value on this merger deal on Wednesday, which resulted in spreading fire to these speculations. He wrote a note to investors, which was titled ‘Introducing PfizerKline’ and explained that the GlaxoSmithKline buyout or merger would result as ‘materially accretive’ for Pfizer in the coming times. This buyout will further allow the health care giant to ‘unlock access to its balance sheet and improve its tax situation.’

‘Introducing PfizerKline’ stated, “We believe that the company has a sense of urgency to create value by leveraging the power of its balance sheet to do needle-moving deals. Since media reports in the past have pointed to the potential for a Pfizer/GSK combination, we are revisiting that theme.”

Gregg Gilbert further mentioned that this merger would be beneficial for both companies. According to him, the buyout will save the costs of around $3.7 billion or 10% of operating expenses as well. So far, the spokespersons from both parties have declined to comment on the speculations that would result in a massive merger.

The CEO of the company, Ian Read, showed his desire in January of being open for various strategic acquisitions in the future. He stated, “Pfizer is biased toward deals with the potential for creating value in the near term.”

However, many analysts feel that this merger deal might be too hard to chew as well. The company’s failed attempts to acquire AstraZeneca were because of the sheer size. However, GlaxoSmithKline is a much bigger company than AstraZeneca, which has a total workforce of 115,000 throughout the world.

Burger King Introduces Chicken Fries in Canada

Owner of Tim Horton closes shop as it gears up for expansion south of the border.

Burger King Inc. (NYSE:BKW) has announced the launch of its chicken fries across restaurants in Canada, where the company has set up its new headquarters, thanks to its merger with Ontario-based Canadian coffee maker, Tim Hortons.

This comes after a successful prelaunch in the US market and being supported by a national campaign, which shows a budding affair between the Miami, Florida-based burger chain’s iconic chicken fries and other sumptuous chicken items. The campaign has been launched on Twitter and Facebook for the last couple of weeks.

Chicken Fries are made up of a white chicken meat, which is coated with light crispy bread seasoning with healthy recipes of spices and herbs. They are then packed and shaped like ordinary French Fries, and are complimented with one of Burger King’s delicious dipping sauce. The Chicken Fires are available for only a limited period in selective Burger King Restaurants in Canada, at a price of $3.49.

In addition, the fast food chain is also set to roll out its most sought after BBQ collection, also for a limited period across Canada, and will feature the return of summer time favorite of BBQ Bacon WHOPPER® and will introduce the new BBQ Bacon TENDERCRISP® Chicken Sandwich.

Meanwhile, Tim Hortons, which is owned by the Burger King, has closed its US head office in Columbus, Ohio, as the company starts to gear up to push its chain store operations down south of the border. No details were provided about the job cuts, except that they may be shifted to its headquarters in Canada, though it did not rule out the possibility of fielding an extensive operations team to give support to US expansion.

Spokesperson, Patrick McGrade,said that the decision to close down the head office is to that growth in the US market is driven from the newly built Tim Hortons Global Restaurant Support Centre based in Oakville, Ontario, to avoid duplication and overlapping in the company’s operations and to improve coordination.

3G Capital, which assisted the process of merger between Burger King and Tim Hortons, has helped the two companies adjust to the working in two different environments in the US and Canadian markets, by helping to streamline operation by cutting around 5% of jobs from both companies and also the decision to close down and shift the office to the new headquarters in Canada.

Burger King’s stock price ended the day at $41.47, a gargantuan boost of more than 17% from the previous day.

Netflix Targets Australian ISP Broadband Speeds With Monthly Performance Ratings

It also says that it will comply with all national and local laws in terms of new Netflix tax.

Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) has announced that it will start rating the internet connection speeds of various Australian internet service providers to determine which one of them can provide the best prime time viewing for its video streaming service.

This comes after many of its customers have complained of ‘unusable’ internet, i.e. the unpredictable internet service, which sometimes goes out of order. The announcement is that it will start providing monthly updates to its customers, as to which of the ISPs will provide the best prime time viewing experience.

The company already does ISP ratings in the US, Canada, parts of South America, particularly Brazil and Chile, and European countries, such as Sweden and Luxemburg. The ISP ratings for Australia and New Zealand will be released soon on a website at blog.netflix.com.

Since its launch in the Australasian region back in March, Netflix has seen its bandwidth usage and total traffic from internet service providers to soar between 20-25%. This has led to many tech analysts concerned about the infrastructure available to take up a large chunk of video streaming.

When Netflix launched its services, it agreed to untethering deals, in which customers can watch online videos without having to think about their monthly internet data allowances but Netflix Australia CEO admits that it was a mistake.

The streaming giant is having a roaring success so far, thanks to its better quality video and quicker start times for streaming internet TV shows and movies. It has entered into agreements with two ISP providers, Optus and iiNet, as the exclusive Internet providers.

Around the world, wherever Netflix operations are available, provision of strong internet services is a prerequisite for the company to successfully operate their Internet television. In fact, according to a study from global video quality analytics, Conviva, at least 1 in 4 respondents said that they would switch off their streaming service after every four minutes if the service is even slightly disturbed. That may be because if customers are watching the most critical part of the movie, and if the internet goes off, then they won’t hesitate to shut it down just to let the internet service providers know that even a minimal disruption will not be accepted.

Meanwhile, in response to the government’s plan to impose a tax on the Internet television companies, the organization says that it will follow all the relevant local and national laws, an implied indication that it will not mind the newly imposed tax.

Netflix Stock price ended the day at $617.87, a gain of 0.75%. 

PharMerica Rings Alarm Bells Over Cardinal Health Contract

Leaders and executives spill the beans by pointing out that the contract signed with Cardinal will cut profits.

Leaders and executives of PharMerica, Louisville-based institutional, specialty home infusion, hospital, and oncology pharmacy services provider, have spoken out against the wholesale drug store distribution agreement signed with Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE:CAH) a few months ago, arguing that it would cut into the company’s margins.

Executive vice president and CFO, Dave Froesel, made that statement during an earnings guidance call and announced that the beginning of the second quarter heralded the start of the operation of using Cardinal Health for the purpose of drug and health care sourcing and distribution. However, the agreement which was signed a few months ago, has come under fire from many, including Mr. Froesel, who stated that the cost of distribution of drugs under Cardinal will be more than with the previous wholesale pharmaceutical supplier, AmerisourceBergen. That, according to Foresel, is going to affect the company’s margins and bottom-line quite badly.

The reason for the termination of PharMerica Corp’s previous working relationship with AmerisourceBergen arises from a legal dispute. The company claims that AmerisourceBergen owes it more than $8 million because of rebate provision that the two companies agreed to in a previous contract. The contract states that it can buy most of its generic drugs from AmerisourceBergen, though the contract included a phrase that allowed it to purchase a portion of other drugs from other sources if it can get a better price. That is where the disturbance all began.

Therefore, the center of dispute lies on the fact that the pricing is based on the wholesale level, but after market changes, it has been dubbed as non-viable. AmerisourceBergen claims that PharMerica inflated its rebate prices and accuses it of breaching the contract by not paying it. AmerisourceBergen hits back, arguing that the contract gives room for both parties to renegotiate in the event of unexpected market changes.

Froesel highlighted that once PharMerica announced its intention to go ahead with the deal with Cardinal, AmerisourceBergen decided to withhold its rebate payments. It is not known if the company will try to pursue the case or whether it feels that the relationship has deteriorated enough to not think about it.

Last week, PharMerica released its earnings result, which saw its revenue rose 13% to $511 million, whereas its net income grew two-fold to less than $10 million. Cardinal Health Inc. stock price ended the day at $86.83, a gain of more than 0.80%, suggesting that the deal has support from investors despite PharMerica leaders’ objection.

Where Does Arena Pharmaceuticals Go From Here Now Following Its Q1 Results

Lowering first quarter loss does not mean that the company would have an easy time ahead due to toughening competition and sales volatility.

Arena Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ARNA) has announced its first quarterly results for this year, reporting a net loss at $24.3 million, lower than $25.3 million of the same quarter a year ago. The loss per share was clocked in at $0.10, compared to $0.12 to the same quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, revenue was reported at $12.26 million, compared to $6.81 million a year ago.

However, the first quarter results do not serve a cause for celebration. Arena managed to trimmed down their losses, albeit marginally, but it is not providing the bigger picture – sales of its medicines are flattening out, and it is getting highly competitive out there in the health care services sector, aside from political factors. For example, Arena’s sales of anti-obesity drug, belviq, has flattened out for the past several weeks, while its competitor, Origen, doles out is product, Contrive, in the market.

Sales have increased by a mere 1%, rising from 14000 scripts to less than 14500 scripts. At the same time, Contrive has seen its sales boom from more than 10000 drug scripts to less than 13000 scripts, a boost of 3.6% growth. Actually, the entire pharmaceutical sector has gone through a thrilling ride, and Arena’s products have failed to take advantage of it, giving room for competitors to grow.

The major worry here is what happened to Qsymia, a product of Vivus, might also happen to Belviq, though that has not to say that it will surely happen but there is no ruling out the possibility. Ever since Qsymia hit its peak last year, its equity has gone flat ever since, even the introduction of a new product in the market. Not that Belviq may suffer the same fate, but its sales growth has not been impressive either.

Based on the overall market situation, Belviq seems like it is indeed losing ground to Contrive, as the sales volume gap in terms of absolute sales is also increasing as well. It was 1600 scripts earlier this year and that has now increased to 3900 in March. It is likely to grow from thereon. Finally, Belviq may have a 37% market share, but Contrive is catching up fast with a market share of 33%.

So what is for food and drug producer to do? Clearly, they need to revamp the brand image of Belviq and try to match up with Contrive’s capabilities, which demand more time and investment on it. The problem is that the product is still relatively young, which it leaves many investors wondering to level it to the second phase. How long will Arena hold on to this product or decide to elevate it to the next level is yet to be seen, especially when the gap between the timing of the trials and the gap in cash in hand is taken into account.

Reasons For Broadcom To Be A Long Term Stock To Buy

Chip maker has seen its stock fly by 40% during the past one year against NASDAQ 20% beats EPS estimates six times in a row.

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ:BRCM) seems like a nice bet to buy its stock for the long run. The semiconductor solutions provider stock price has performed  better than NASDAQ (40% against 20%) during the past one year, and has also beaten past the EPS six times consecutively, and nine out of ten times in the past, as illustrated by the first quarter results. Segment revenue was reported growing at 11% year-to-year to clock in at more than $2 billion. 

According to researcher, Susan Eustis, the LTE wireless market size reaches around less than $80 billion. She points to the fact that everything is moving towards the mobile field, which is driven by the wave of smartphones that are becoming cheaper and more easily accessible among the worldwide population. This, in turn, is driving universal connectivity as well.

In fact, based on a study by Statista, there are currently around 1 billion HSPA and over 60 million LTE mobile network subscribers around the world. By 2018, they are expected to increase to around 1.35 billion subscribers. This growth potential is expected to drive Broadcom’s LTE and TDS CDMA solutions for the next five years. Right now, there is a very big market for LTE subscriptions existing in China, with local telecom provider, China Mobile, taking full advantage of the boom. However, there is still a lot of room for them to grow there, so it looks like an ideal time for Broadcom to invest there.

On top of this, there is an ongoing activity concerning the next generation Internet of Things, something that the Information Technology giant, Qualcomm, is currently leading. Broadcom is catching up though, having shipped a substantial number of WICED development kit, a complete package of hardware and software based solutions for prototyping IoT products.

Similarly, mobile broadband is also booming, with forecasters expecting a CAGR of 16% growth over the next five years. Most of the growth will come over from the emerging markets, which are starting from a low base, and expecting to catch up fast. Once it happens, it will provide a boon for companies to market their products and services online to gain more access to consumers while earning supplemental income from advertising.

In addition to the aforementioned points, the company has a dividend yield of over 1.30% and a healthy cash flow that will help to sustain its dividend for the future.
Broadcom Corporation stock price ended the day at $27.25, down 1.05% from the previous day.