Posts Tagged ‘pharma’

  This is bizarre. It turns out that many doctors don’t know what the real, FDA-approved indications are for the medications they’re prescribing. In a Wall Street Journal article that discusses the risks of off-label uses for prescription drugs, the author cites a 2009 study of 1,199 physicians (mostly primary care doctors and psychiatrists) that […]

  Presidential debates. Daraprim. Martin Shkreli. Drug pricing is what everyone’s talking about. Dr. Joshua P. Cohen, a research associate professor at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, wrote an excellent article that breaks down how drug prices are determined. He also shared some key facts that support the notion of the […]

  HIT Consultant, a digital publication focused on healthcare technology, recently shared a report by Reed Smith on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in life sciences and how personalized medicine is playing an important role in many of today’s transactions. While pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have not abandoned the “one-size-fits all” approach to developing drugs, many […]

  Over the last decade, the life sciences industry has gone from running clinical trials on paper or, in many cases, in Excel, to leveraging comprehensive web-based systems, such as electronic data capture (EDC) and clinical trial management systems (CTMS). But, in more recent years, the widespread use of mobile technology has enabled even more […]

  While we work in an industry in which we aim to treat patients, rich or poor, we live in a world where money is often deemed king. And, with an influx of financial investments pouring into newer pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, people are jumping ship more than ever, making it harder for big pharma […]

  “…a news organization can be most nimble when it is built organically for the digital age.” – John Henry That’s what STAT is. John Henry, the owner of the The Boston Globe, Boston Red Sox, Liverpool Football Club, and Roush Fenway Racing, just launched a new digital publication that’ll solely cover the life sciences […]

Reading a recent LinkedIn Pulse post from Genentech’s VP of IT Americas, Cindy Elkins, made me smile. She said so many good things. Cindy discussed the IT landscape at the company, arguably the most famous biotech (ever!), and how the IT organization impacts employees and patients on many different levels. 

  Several months ago I posted Why Don’t I See Ads For Clinical Trials?, a piece in which I questioned just that. In a society where healthcare is always front and center, how is it that most of us are still unaware of our options when it comes to participating in clinical research? 

  Thanks to one of my LinkedIn contacts, I was introduced to a newly released “scorecard” that ranks pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies based on their precision medicine efforts. In essence, the organizations who made the cut are the ones moving precision medicine forward. They’re the ones focused on leveraging biomarkers to develop new therapies. 

  I’ve written a number of blog posts on the challenges of clinical trial recruitment, and that’s for good reason. According to Dr. Steven Alberts, Chair of Medical Oncology with the Mayo Clinic, only 5% of cancer patients ever enroll in a trial. On top of that, only a fraction of all trials ever complete […]

  A couple of weeks ago, I shared some statistics that I learned from an FDA blog post about rare diseases. While those numbers will make you cringe, Pfizer will give you hope. They, along with Spark Therapeutics, are teaming up to develop treatments for rare diseases, like hemophilia, through gene therapy. Gene therapy is […]

  I recently read an article from McKinsey & Company about the digital revolution that needs to occur in order for the life sciences industry to be successful in today’s age. This is the same digital revolution that helped transform other industries, such as financial and retail. Like I mentioned in one of my previous blog […]