Technology

Pilot projects involving RFID technology are appearing at some major pharma companies. But uptake of RFID-based solutions remains limited due to concerns about accuracy, reliability, and ROI.

Pharma companies believe that they can compete in an e-prescribing environment if information systems permit full disclosure and allow doctors to create bookmarks that link easily to information they want.

Without common reporting standards in place, researchers have little incentive to share data with scientists elsewhere in the company. When researchers don't sharedata on a regular basis, they can begin to feel proprietary about their work-and even less inclined to disclose their results.

The race among health information portals may result in better content offerings for consumers. Advertisers that move first have the opportunity to buy out targeted inventory at a good rate.

Pharma companies are committed to using electronic data capture in clinical trials. Technology adoption will continue to grow, as FDA and consumers want faster safety data.

Electronic patient-reported outcomes tools let trial sponsors enforce recording deadlines and compliance. They help keep subjects honest.

CMS envisions studies to show which drugs keep patients out of hospitals or how certain treatments can reduce side effects. Such analysis would support decisions on best practices in using medications.

Even though data can single out physicians with high marketing upsides, most pharma companies are doing without such high-value data.

The future of US healthcare is being created today in Medicare's demonstration programs. But how you respond to them depends a lot on what kind of company you are.

In a non-human primate study, high doses of Neumune resulted in 90 percent survival against a lethal level of radiation.

Having an efficient, integrated call center can be a matter of life or death. Imagine a pharma company not knowing for several weeks that the active ingredient in a life-saving drug was left out of the final product? How would they learn of the error if the quality control at the manufacturing plant failed to identify the problem? Most likely, the next opportunity for identifying such a crisis is through the call center-the key interface between healthcare professionals, consumers, and the company. However, it's not enough to log complaints about a product's efficacy. Once documented, complaints need to be routed to the right department, evaluated, and consolidated. If a streamlined process isn't in place, weeks could pass without anyone ever taking any action-even as adverse event records pile up.

The use of a CUI leads development efforts to explre the most valuable region of treatment - not necessarily the the most efficacious.

In an ideal world, an anti-counterfeit solution would provide protection throughout the supply chain, allow for easy product identification by physicians, pharmacists, and patients, be easily implemented without ongoing costs-and improve brand image and marketability while it's at it. Yet most current anti-counterfeiting measures involve packaging technologies such as holograms, inks, bar codes and radio frequency ID (RFID) that, although useful, cannot ensure the integrity of the pharmaceutical supply chain, because drugs do not remain in their original packaging. Legitimate repackaging regularly occurs in the pharmacy and elsewhere, and authentic packaging-recycled or stolen-can contain adulterated, counterfeited drugs.