Yes--what is your question?

A question changes everything. A question mark sets a thought on a pedestal in the street and invites comment. It says, “I don’t know the answer—do you?” When I teach, a question is one of my most powerful tools. With a question I ask for input while simultaneously implying “You’ve got something valuable to say and I want to hear it.” The best, most fruitful discussions happen when I present what I know and then invite students to contribute from their experience and thinking. Something alive often happens, something I could not plan for or even predict. Something that moves us all forward.

For marketers, the question is equally powerful. If we’re lucky, we’re in a team where we can ask questions openly rather than pretending to own all the answers. Our usual path to outward communication is to ask our questions in the (relatively) protected environs of conference rooms and among colleagues. Then we polish and hone the messages into one-way barbs to shoot out through our media channels. But what if the questions themselves were our communication points? What if we started with questions to our growing community of similarly-interested people, long before we ever started polishing messages for public consumption?

Once upon a time my team worked on promoting a new heart failure device. We identified a single main message that incorporated three strong benefits (based on market research) which became the core of our campaign. We tested our messages informally, received anecdotal feedback and pushed forward. Today, with the help of social media, that scenario might look like this: take the received market research, our questions and immediately begin dialogue. Proceed with message polishing and honing  even as the community dialogue continues. At some point the internal and external dialogues blend and the end result is something beyond what we could conceive on our own. Best of all, this new something already his mind-share in a community of interested people. And if you have a sales force, you know that mindshare is a key gear for turning sales.

Next Up: What would dialogue success look like?

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Photo credit: Colt Elementary PTO & JustHost.com

An unexpected wave of consolidation is cresting, but not where the pundits may have expected. Medtech and medical devices have always been segments ripe for playing the buyout game, but why now and who is next? Recent notable aquisition announcements include Thoratec (Nasdaq:THOR, http://www.thoratec.com) buying Heartware, Inc. (Nasdaq: HTWR, www.heartware.com) for $282 million, Medtronic purchasing both Ablation Frontiers (www.ablationfrontiers.com) for $225 million and CoreValve, Inc. (www.corevalve.com) for a whopping $700 million. The simple fact is that larger players are looking down the road past the current financial meltdown to a world that will certainly include healthcare reform and probably a slowdown in innovation due to lower funding and reimbursement levels. Scooping up the best new technologies with cash on hand may be a play to maintain and build future market share in specialized large markets such as heart failure and atrial fibrillation that are underserved today.

So how do investors capitalize on the next moves within the industry? One approach is to look at technologies that are gaining market share in the largest markets. One target could be Endologix (Nasdaq:ELGX, www.endologix.com),  which has invented a means of treating abdominal aortic aneurysms with a stentlike device (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgMDdlOnMLE). Endologix has been quietly taking market share from their larger competitors but their share price has been falling. Acquired or not, it’s likely a good place to find value.

In interventional medicine, Angiodynamics (Nasdaq:ANGO, http://www.angiodynamics.com), Endocare, Inc. (Nasdaq:ENDO, http://www.endocare.com) and ATS Medical (Nasdaq:ATSI, http://www.atsmedical.com) each have been growing steadily in their respective segments and are structured conveniently for purchase.

Another market segment that seems ripe for consolidation is molecular diagnostics. As more and more predictive and prognostic technologies are invented and as personalized medicine becomes the norm, oncologists and other physicians are going to tire of sending out samples to a dozen specialized labs for analysis. Single technology labs such as Genomic Health (Nasdaq:GHDX, http://www.genomichealth.com) or specialized molecular testing centers such as Clarient (Nasdaq:CLRT, http://www.clarientinc.com) or Genoptix (Nasdaq:GXDX, http://www.genoptix.com) seem like great candidates for acquisition by cash-rich, larger players such as Myriad Genetics (Nasdaq:MYGN, http://www.myriad.com) or even more traditional labs such as Quest Diagnostics (NYSE:DGX, http://www.questdiagnostics.com) that want to bolster their high-end testing reportoire.

Take your pick of these or other smallcap candidates- just make sure the market is large, sales are growing, and that clinical advantage over larger competitors is present.

In response to yesterday’s post about “meeting the press” in New York City, we received many questions from executives with biotech and medtech companies about what they should do to prepare for these meetings. 

At Russo Partners, all PR programs with media relations components involve story development and interview rehearsal sessions. Dubbed the Newsmakers Workshop, this client favorite consists of:

1. A review of the rights that you have as a newsmaker, or story teller, for your company

2. A discussion of the rights that journalists have in covering your company

3. The explanation of the news-reporting  and -writing process (from our former journalists, of course)

4. The diagramming of the typical media interview — and a demonstration of who is the leader vs. who is the follower

5. The development of a media interview checklist (with our own science and medicine experts) that contains three key messages you need to deliver — points that “must air” — in order for your story to be told and to lead your audiences to desired conclusions

6. A discussion of difficult questions that you anticipate and possible answers you can use

7. The introduction of tactics that will enable you to take and maintain control of all types of interviews

8. Practice, practice and more practice – on-camera and off-camera 

To reduce your story to three key messages, team members focus on whom you want to reach and what you want your audiences to think and do after reading the article or watching the segment that is the result of your interview.

We will provide more PR tips in future posts.  This one, as we stated up front, is the result of inquiries to us following yesterday’s post. We are happy to see that Rx for PR is gaining in popularity among the audiences for which the content is intended. We welcome your questions and comments.

January 2009 has come and gone. A wrap-up report of Russo Partners’ activities shows that biotech and medtech companies kicked off the year with a fast start.  Here are some of the January highlights:

S*BIO, Singapore’s most advanced biotech company, celebrated success on the business-development front with the announcement of two significant deals. The agreements, with Onyx Pharmaceuticals and Tragara Pharmaceuticals, involved different types of kinase inhibitors in early stages of development. Russo Partners worked closely with the communications teams at Onyx and Tragara to maximize publicity for the respective announcements. With the successful navigation of the media landscapes in the U.S. and Singapore, Russo Partners generated significant media coverage for all companies involved.  S*BIO’s executive team was inundated by calls and e-mails from other possible partners worldwide.

Anadys Pharmaceuticals’ stock price soared by 114% following the announcement of viral load reduction data from an early study of ANA598 in chronic Hepatitis C patients. By working with the data and select media under embargo prior to the distribution of a news release and the company’s hosting of a conference call with investors, Russo Partners lifted the curtain on the data in a big way. This PR approach produced a tremedous return in the form of in-depth media coverage that contained the key messages developed for the announcement. The PR results were far greater than any others of comparable Phase I trials.

Many of Russo Partners’ clients spent the second week of the month navigating the hotels and restaurants in San Francisco’s Union Square for JPMorgan Healthcare Conference activities. Russo Partners scheduled and coordinated close to 100 meetings for clients with VCs, investment bankers, fund managers and journalists. For new clients CorNova and Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals, the conference was their first agency outing and involved high-powered meetings with members of the investment and media communities.

Other conference participants with Russo Partners included BIOCOM, San Diego’s life science industry organization, and the Burnham Institute for Medical Research. Media interviews conducted at the agency’s base camp in the Hotel Nikko along with TV interviews taped at a nearby studio added to the lively mix of activities.

Corthera, which is developing the hormone relaxin as a treatment for acute heart failure, took the podium at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference and presented an update on the Phase II/III study.  In late-2008, Russo Partners unveiled an interim analysis of the Phase II data to journalists at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions — a story that Cardiovascular Business reported as one of the most significant developments announced at the conference thanks to Russo Partners’ aggressive pursuit of media coverage.

Radi Medical Systems, which St. Jude Medical acquired in December, enjoyed broad media coverage of the New England Journal of Medicine’s publication of the FAME one-year follow-up data. See the January 20 blog entry to read more about this successful PR campaign.

In typical Russo Partners fashion, the agency continued its handling of the game-changing events in healthcare.  This time the event was the FDA’s clearance for Geron to initiate the world’s first clinical trial of a human embryonic stem cell therapy. Take a look at the January 28 blog entry.

Russo Partners looks forward to maintaining the fast PR pace in February with major client and industry events around the corner.

Versant Ventures' Ross Jaffe

In a week of more than 100 meetings with clients, VCs, portfolio managers and journalists at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, we had a chance to catch up with Versant Ventures’ Ross Jaffe. One of the founders of Versant in 1999, Ross specializes in early stage investing in medical device companies.

As we chatted about companies with which we both work, we turned the discussion to what executives who are looking for VC funding for their medtech businesses should think about at the start of a challenging year. As Ross pointed out, executives are facing a double whammy: How do they deal with the current financial markets? And what can they expect in terms of the incoming administration’s healthcare reform? Both questions are top-of-mind among company executives and VCs alike.

To Ross and his Versant partners, companies must justify — now more than ever — why their products are mission critical to healthcare.  This means there must be compelling reasons for the companies’ technologies.  Long gone are the days of build it and they — the users of the technologies — will come. 

Ross said he’s staying away from companies whose products would be viewed as nice to have by doctors and aiming for companies whose products will be critical to making the practice of medicine more cost-effective.  These are the “gotta haves” for him.

Along with compelling reasons for the technologies, Ross wants to see bodies of clinical data that demonstrate the technologies work. Don’t have this today?  Go and get it or face a challenging road to securing funding. 

And what about the companies that Ross has already funded? Be capital efficient. Remain visible. Demonstrate that you are honing your focus.  Visibility and focus lend themselves to our work at Russo Partners as healthcare communicators.  As Ross noted, good PR is critical for medtech companies as long as it, too, is focused on supporting current business initiatives. 

We expect to see a lot more of Ross and Versant Ventures as Russo Partners moves ahead with extensive medtech PR programs.

More on Versant Ventures’ Ross Jaffe:

Ross brings significant clinical insight and venture capital experience to Versant’s investing efforts. Ross co-founded Versant Ventures in 1999 after spending nine years at Brentwood Venture Capital where, as a general partner, he led investments in medical devices, drug delivery, and healthcare information systems companies.

Ross is a board-certified internist, having completed his residency training in Internal Medicine/Primary Care at the University of California, San Francisco, where he remained a part-time attending physician until 1995. Before and during medical school, he was an Analyst for Lewin and Associates, a healthcare consulting firm, and a Research Associate at Dartmouth Medical School.

Ross has served as a director of St. Francis Medical Technologies (sold), Therasense (sold), Novacept (sold), Micro Interventional Systems (sold), Aradigm (public), Webster Laboratories (sold), Atrionix (sold), and Pro•Duct Health (sold). He currently serves on the boards of Ablation Frontiers, Acclarent, Calypso Medical Technologies, ICS, Insulet (NASDAQ: PODD), Portaero and Vital Therapies. He is also a director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists (WAVC) and a member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) Medical Industry Group. Ross earned his BA in Policy Studies from Dartmouth in 1980, his MD from Johns Hopkins in 1985, and his MBA from Stanford in 1990.

Professional Regulation Commission (PRC)  announces schedule for 2009 Licensure Examination.  Below is the schedule of 2009 Board Examination for various professions including venues for each examination.

*  Schedules may change.   It’s better to call PRC prior the scheduled examination and deadline of applications.

Philips has developed a biosensor technology which has the potential to offer lab-quality immunoassay results at the point of care. This new “Magnotech” technology uses magnetic nanoparticles to measure target molecules and could bring complex in-vitro diagnostic tests out of the laboratory and into decentralized settings such as the patient’s bedside and at home.

A first collaboration agreement for the new technology was recently announced, with Concateno, a UK-based leading European company in drugs of abuse testing. Concateno and Philips will deliver the new solution to selected customers in 2009. At launch, the Concateno-Philips handheld product will test five drug groups at the same time (cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, amphetamine and cannabis) in a single saliva sample. Total test time of the new device, from collection of sample to result, will be less than 90 seconds.

[Sources : articles 1, 2, 3, 4]

Uma plataforma remota de sinais vitais, que monitoriza um doente permanentemente, ou o recurso à nanotecnologia para um combate mais eficaz do cancro da mama são alguns dos projectos expostos hoje e quarta-feira em Coimbra num encontro internacional.
Os dois projectos incluem-se no conjunto de mais de meia centena que, durante estes dois dias, serão apresentados no Medtech, fórum pan-europeu para a inovação tecnológica em saúde, que reúne, na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra (FCTUC), centena e meia de líderes de investigação, investidores e peritos do sector da saúde e tecnologias médicas, oriundos de 15 países.

Continuar a ler esta notícia do site cienciahoje.pt AQUI

This is my first stab at blogging. It’s taken a while to find a topic that I was interested in writing about consistently, but finally I have. Over the past year I have immersed myself in the world of social media, particularly as it relates to healthcare. The number of health-related social networks, blogs, videos and wikis is astounding. Even more so is the level of trust they inspire and the depth of personal information patients share with each other online. While patients still turn to their doctors (when they can reach them), they are also increasingly turning to each other to discuss medications, treatments, symptoms and more.

What is happening online today is very different than what we experienced in the early days of the Internet – remember the term eHealth? The early eHealth sites were information aggregators, primarily one-way in nature. They did not encourage interaction among site participants. Today’s sites are the opposite, all about community, conversations, collective wisdom and UCG (user generated content).

So where does pharma fit into all of this? Traditionally the pharmaceutical industry has been a sizable funder of web-based activities through sponsorships, online CME, unbranded disease sites and branded product sites. According to eMarketer (April 2008), online ad spending will reach $1.2 billion in 2008 and nearly double to $2.2 billion by 2011. Indeed without support from the pharma industry, many health sites would have failed.

Today’s web, however, poses new challenges for pharma marketers. Dialogue is happening all over the Internet – patients talk about drugs in online videos, physicians discuss products they have used (and perhaps disliked) on blogs, parents post information (and misinformation) about childhood vaccines in social networks. In the old days, pharma could control the message; today that is neither possible nor desirable.

So then how and when should pharma engage? The goal of this blog is to address that question. We will explore specifics related to social media and identify how industry (pharma, biotech and medtech) to can engage successfully and meaningfully. We will look at specific examples of programs that are launched, interview industry leaders, talk to CEO’s of interesting social media companies, examine the regulatory environment, capture insights from patient opinion leaders and highlight relevant data.

In the true spirit of Web 2.0, please join me as co-creators of this blog. Send ideas, comments, let me know if you’d like to write a post. Email me at bellerin@interbrandwood.com.

Bunny Ellerin

EduCamp 1st session – July 08 Intake

Today is EDX Day a.k.a. HOLIDAY!! hahaha.

“Shopping??! Where??!!” Hehe. Me and my friends went to JJ Ipoh yesterday because “someone” is already gone crazy because of “not going to ipoh” for a long time. Haha. He said he haven’t go to ipoh even once in this sem. Pity him. So, because of his craziness, we went to ipoh. There was only a few of people there. I think it’s because of weekdays and it’s not a public holiday or something on that day. We went because today is EDX day on UTP. So, no class today.

Yesterday, we went to ipoh at about 4pm from UTP. But, our friend hash nak pegi gunting rambut dulu plak. After he’s cutting his head hair about 45 mins, we went straight to JJ. 1st thing we do when we get there is praying. We got out before azan. So, tak sempat la nak solat kat UTP. After we performed our prayer (actually me and umar prayed 1st), we had our dinner at Secret Recipe. Cake before meal or cake after meal? Nvm, me and umar ate 1 slice Marble Cheesecake 1st just to wait the other two to finished their prayer. It was so delicious!! Because the last time I ate that cheesecake was like 2-3 months ago. After they finished, we order the meals. I was so FULL although I ate fish only. Huhu

Afterthat, we went shopping!! The 1st store was the JJ itself. Because someone 2 person want to buy a new towel. There were a lot of nice clothes but I don’t feel like buying them. I just interested on wearing them. Hehe. Then, we went to Giordano. I just bought a couple of t-shirt there. I want a pink colour shirt from Giordano!! Aishh….menyesal tak beli masa ade dulu. But, it’s ok. One of the shirt’s colour that I bought is not so bad. It’s nice. Don’t worry, there will be next time. My roomate also bought a shirt. A polo shirt, also from Giordano. In plan, we were suppose to go to Padini Concept Store but they were closed. Sad. So, we went to Samuel & Kevin. I like one of the jacket there but like I said, I only interested on wearing them. Afterthat, we proceed to SUB Zero. But here, I bought a shirt. A really nice one. And I don’t mind on buying them. Haha. The shirt is like a formal-casual type of shirt and it’s black. Then, I went to Watson to buy some toiletries. I bought a pack of InnerShine Prune Essence!! Wuhuuu….There was also InnerShine Berry Essence. Hash bought that. So, I trade one with him. The taste of Berry essence is also good. Next time, I’ll buy both. Hahaha.

After enough of shopping. We went to seek for ticket as planned. We watched L change the world. It’s like a Death Note part 3 or something. The story was interesting. There’s element of funny, happy, sad. It’s a nice story to watch. There’re also cute girls in the movie. Ooops. After it finished, we went straight to UTP. Shops were already closed by the time the movie finished. So, no more shopping can be done.

But, it was a very enjoyable shopping night. But, I think I overbudget. Takpe lah, sekali sekala. Hehe. Anyway shopping with my mom is still the best. Why? Hehe. Fikir la sendiri eh.

I think I’ll stop here. In this evening, I think I want to go to MGM (Medtech General Meeting). Konon-konon nak join la. I think that is the reason I want to attend it. Ok, that’s the end

Akira out~~

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh..

Here’s a Gallery with some very kewl CP pix by C-Base. Example:

 Miniaturization of ureteroscopic instrumentation will continue, with smaller fiber and digital scopes, improved accessories, and new energy  sources. As the instrumentation becomes smaller and more refined, it also will become more delicate. Thus, manufacturers are challenged to develop new, smaller instruments that will also survive the rigors of surgical therapy.

Today, a rigid ureteroscope may require repair after 3-6 months of vigorous use. This is in contrast to small flexible ureteroscopes, which may survive only approximately 20 cases. The lifespan-limiting factor for these instruments is usually the trauma of sterilization. The future should hold a more resilient flexible ureteroscope that requires infrequent repairs while still facilitating the most complex endoscopic procedures.

Where does this go? Will optic companies improve the quality of the scopes, sterilization and disinfecting companies use less invasive ways to clean scopes, or.. will they finally work together and improve the lifetime of the scopes?

Bart Verleg