Archive for the ‘Pharma’ Category

asellers
Amanda
Sellers

JPM 2013

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

Lissette Capati and I made the annual pilgrimage that most biopharma folks do – the journey to San Francisco for the JP Morgan Healthcare conference. We’ve been attending for several years now, since about 2009, so we’ve seen the ups and downs and what’s trending. There was a renewed optimism this year that we haven’t seen in some time and a sense that investors are genuinely excited about what’s to come. Biopharmaceutical companies are developing truly revolutionary approaches to scientific discovery and clinical development and health technology companies are making remarkable inroads in data capture and innovative uses of gathering, analyzing and using patient information to drive both treatment decisions and further research.

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Posted in Biotechnology, Pharma
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asellers
Amanda
Sellers

Even though it’s about R+D, science and investors, pharma is still a “people business”

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

Earlier today, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting at the Georgia BIO Leaders Breakfast. Despite the rain and potential hazard of Atlanta traffic, the room was packed and ready to hear insights from Arbor Pharmaceuticals’ President and CEO, Ed Schutter. The format was an informal Q&A about how Mr. Schutter came to Atlanta from Chicago, studied to be a pharmacist at Mercer University, and found a love for science, medicine and business. What better way to combine all these interests than to work in the pharmaceutical business?

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Posted in BIO, Biotechnology, Company Culture, Pharma
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Frannie Marmorstein
Frannie
Marmorstein

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Yesterday I was browsing Popular Science and found an interesting article, Science Confirms the Obvious: Rejection Can Make You More Creative. The article discussed new research being conducted by a team from Cornell and Johns Hopkins that found people who handle rejection in a proper manner, can experience heightened creativity and even commercial success through an ability to avoid mainstream thought and pursue their own creative solutions to problems.

In summary, rejection or failure forces people to be creative and think outside of their “box.” While this sounds pretty obvious, I started thinking about this in terms of scientific research and advancement and how, as a community, we need to be embracing this concept. The scientific community continually wants to publish and promote positive study results, but does this really benefit the advancement of science? What if some of our biggest rejections could lead us to a greater success? (more…)

Posted in Pharma, Progeria, Research, science
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Anthony LaFauce
Anthony
LaFauce

Where Does Protection End and Smother Begin? FDA Requires 45 Days to Review Ads

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

fda agentThe FDA is an interesting agency when it comes to the American public and credibility. Think about it: whenever most government agencies release a report or statistic, the general public tends to question its validity. But when the FDA publishes a report, the public (with the exception of people who work in the food/drug industry) just assumes they are right.

The FDA has just submitted a document to the Federal Registry stating all television ads that are ‘direct-to-consumer’ have to be pre-submitted to the FDA for review and approval. The Federal Registry is the “official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents.” In layman’s terms: if something is published here it is permanently “on the record” and part of American history.

I understand the argument for this approach: “The FDA just wants to make sure that my health interests are being protected.” Ok, I get that. But what if the FDA fails to review an ad during that 45-day period? And then that ad doesn’t run and the public doesn’t know about a drug? No big deal, right? Wrong. (more…)

Posted in FDA, New Media, Pharma
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Ken
Rabin

The Journal of Health Communication Celebrates 100 Issues – What’s Next?

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Milestones matter, and achieving a century of anything is worth noting. In Poland, where I have lived and worked since 2005, birthdays are celebrated not with a chorus of “Happy Birthday to You,” but with a raucous song called “Sto Lat!” that means “100 Years.” My adopted country clearly gets the message.

There is no question that over the span of its existence, the Journal of Health Communications has made a real difference in advancing and diffusing knowledge in this critical sector of the communications discipline. As a member of the Journal’s editorial board, I’m excited to celebrate this 100 issue achievement, however, the question that I ask myself is, “Where do we go from here?” I think that the challenges of staying relevant in the years that lie ahead will be both plentiful and, hopefully, invigorating ones for this journal, its editors, contributors and readers.

The first change I expect to see is in the focus of the articles we publish. These changes will be driven by a combination of profound global demographic changes, ongoing economic pressures and the plethora of new media and media apps that are the currency of early 21stcentury communications. With respect to demographics, we are right now in the midst of two profound currents of change: on the one hand, western society is aging rapidly, and on the other hand, the number of young people in the developing societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America is growing at an extraordinary rate. (more…)

Posted in Health Policy, Pharma, PR Industry
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LukeDickinson
Luke
Dickinson

Medical Device Recall and Crisis Response

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

There have been countless recalls of faulty drugs and medical devices in the pharmaceutical and device industry. Some have been the result of malicious actions by external parties, while others can be attributed to production faults or other random incidents. No matter what the cause, the manufacturer is always placed directly in the spotlight and how they respond can have lasting effects on their reputation.

The most recent to capture the media’s attention – as they inevitably always do – is a voluntary recall of around 600,000 contact lenses made by New York-based CooperVision, Inc. Federal health officials claim that an “undefined residue” on the lenses has caused a range of eye problems, from blurred vision to painful corneal tears.

CooperVision has come under heavy criticism for their slow response to the recall. This delay has resulted in threats by the FDA to issue a public health warning and sweeping negative media coverage for CooperVision. As a voluntary recall, the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates contact lenses as a class III medical device, has only limited authority to force CooperVision into action, with much of the onus for notification and action placed on the individual retailers.

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Posted in Biotechnology, Community Involvement, Crisis Management, FDA, Health Care Industry, Medical Devices, Pharma
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