A Philadelphia jury has awarded $6.3 million in damages to a woman who claimed she developed breast cancer after taking the Pfizer menopause drug Prempro, Reuters reports.  In the verdict, jurors also found that Pfizer may be liable for punitive damages because it willfully failed to warn patients about risks associated with the drug. The jury will reconvene on Monday to consider the amount of punitive damages.

FULL STORY

Pfizer unit, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, has agreed to release as many as 300,000 documents related to the development, sales and marketing of the hormone drug Prempro.  Pfizer/Wyeth’s decision is in response to concerns that the blockbuster drug could be labeled a public health hazard.  Prempro and other hormone replacement drugs generated $1.2 billion in sales for the company in 2008.

FULL STORY

La compra de medicamentos por internet supone un serio peligro para la salud, ya que la mayoría de los sitios web que venden fármacos sin receta no están acreditados ni sus productos han pasado controles de sanidad.

Normalmente son sustancias que se anuncian como “genéricos” de medicamentos reconocidos y que se venden a un precio mucho más bajo que el que tendrían en una farmacia. ¿Las razones que llevan a la gente a comprar medicamentos por internet? Supongo que pueden ser variadas, como un bajo precio, que no sea necesario presentar una receta médica o que la persona que la compra no se atreva a solicitarla “cara a cara”, como ocurre con el sildenafil.

Aunque algunas veces estos supuestos medicamentos no son más que comprimidos inocuos recubiertos, otras veces se trata de sustancias químicas o compuestos herbales que no han sido aprobados por las autoridades sanitarias y que, por lo tanto, pueden ser un peligro para la salud de quienes los consumen. Puede que en algún caso se trate, efectivamente, del medicamento que anuncian, pero recordad que si es necesaria una receta médica es porque su consumo puede acarrear unos efectos adversos, en muchos casos fatales, si no se toma en la dosis adecuada y bajo supervisión facultativa.

En el Reino Unido la farmacéutica Pfizer ha lanzado una campaña publicitaria para advertir de los riesgos de adquirir y consumir medicamentos a través de la red. Con esta campaña, generada por la agencia Langland, han ganado un Gold Award en los premios The Rx Club. Se trata de una campaña titulada “Real Danger” y cuenta con un sitio web y un vídeo que no os dejará indiferente:

The CEO of Sanofi-Aventis recently laid out a new plan for encouraging innovation within his company that differs drastically from the one that formerly existed there, and which differs from the typical model employed in most pharmaceutical companies.  The question is, will it stick?

Chris Viehbacher made a strong commitment to open innovation in his statement to the Financial Times, saying Sanofi-Aventis historically had “not a lot of external partnerships”, nor “[any] contact with our commercial organizations,” which along with the admitted complexity of the organization, combined to “kill the innovative spirit.”

Viehbacher’s commitment to change comes not long after Pfizer’s co-development of an online community to accelerate clinical research.   Two of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world are now actively or committed to relying on open innovation in significant ways; one (Pfizer) to expedite the time to market, and the other (Sanofi-Aventis) to ostensibly improve the quantity and quality of ideas coming out of their R&D.  It appears that, while some companies are willing to take advantage of the poor economy to acquire companies which are then grafted onto the buyer, others are making more substantive changes that require patience (but tend to cost less).  To apply a baseball metaphor, some companies are the Yankees, acquiring expensive but proven free agents (that are further along in their careers), while others are like the Red Sox, with money to spend but still willing to develop young players via smaller-scale acquisitions (i.e. the amateur draft).

The main sign of Sanofi-Aventis’s commitment to this plan is their lack of blockbuster acquisitions.  This stands in sharp contrast to Merck’s acquisition of Schering-Plough, among other major acquisitions in 2009.  Sanofi-Aventis will be an interesting company to watch over the next 6-12 months, because their message should attract many small companies with interesting ideas who would normally refuse to deal with a company of their size for fear of being swallowed completely.  Instead, Mr. Viehbacher seems to be saying, “We will nurture you from afar instead of possibly tainting your idea with our corporate philosophy which demands that all ideas be driven towards billion-dollar drugs or the discard pile.”

What happens when the economy recovers or the next blockbuster comes along (or doesn’t)?  Will the CEO stick to this philosophy?  Reverting back to the baseball metaphor, what if Mr. Viehbacher, under pressure from their board of directors and shareholders to extract value from these companies that were allowed to innovate away from corporate pressures (especially since pharmaceutical R&D is a notorious time and money sink), pulls a Steinbrenner and begins micro-managing these companies?  Many corporate strategies over the past year were initiated as moves of desperation to keep their company afloat, or to get some publicity; the fact that a positive change may have occurred was welcome but incidental.  The economic downturn probably got more companies thinking about innovation only as a way to seem innovative.  Sanofi-Aventis, through the statements of its CEO, seems committed to this new direction, which is encouraging, but I’ll be a believer when their actions follow suit.

Vaccinurile împotriva a numeroase boli, inclusiv noua gripă H1N1, considerate periculoase şi costisitoare în trecut, sunt acum motoare de crestere  pentru marile companii farmaceutice. Gigantul elveţian Novartis a lansat săptămâna aceasta, în Statele Unite, o unitate de producţie de vaccinuri, în care va folosi o tehnologie nouă. Investiţia a fost sprijinită de guvernul federal american cu 487 milioane de dolari, scrie BusinessWeek.

În SUA, 50 mil. doze de vaccin împotriva H1N1 au fost distribuite deja, dar ajung doar pentru o treime din cele 160 mil. de americani pe care autorităţile vor să-i vaccineze. Pe termen scurt, cel puţin, vaccinul împotriva gripei noi va duce la creşteri masive ale vânzărilor pentru trei producători europeni. Analiştii estimează că GSK va vinde vaccin anti-H1N1 de 1,7 miliarde de dolari în ultimul trimestru al acestui an. O cifră asemănătoare este aşteptată pentru primele trei luni din 2010. Vânzările Novartis vor ajunge la 700 mil. dolari, iar Sanofi-Aventis se aşteaptă să vândă vaccin împotriva gripei noi de peste 500 milioane de dolari. Dacă, până de curând, doar câţiva mari producători s-au axat pe vaccinuri, din cauza costurilor mari de producţie şi a veniturilor relativ mici, acest segment pare acum să câştige teren. Piaţa medicamentelor cu prescripţie, estimată la 780 miliarde de dolari la nivel global, creşte doar cu 5% pe an, în timp ce piaţa vaccinurilor va avea o creştere de 13% pe an până în 2012, potrivit specialiştilor. “Tot mai multe companii investesc în vaccinuri, ca metodă de diversificare a portofoliului şi datorită noilor tehnologii”, spune Michael Boyd, directorul Federaţiei Internaţionale a Producătorilor şi Asociaţiilor Farma (IFPMA).

Producătorul american Pfizer a intrat pe piaţa vaccinurilor prin preluarea Wyeth, pentru 68 mld. dolari, iar Abbott Laboratories a plătit 6,6 mld. dolari pentru producătorul elveţian de vaccinuri Solvay. Compania britanică GlaxoSmithKline a încheiat recent un contract în valoare de 2,2 mld. dolari cu Brazilia, pentru furnizarea de vaccinuri.

sursa: standard.ro

Acum ramane sa ne gandim daca e profitabil ca “lansezi” un nou virus pe piata sau nu.

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Miniblu

Miniblu este primul si cel mai mare lant de magazine cu produse pentru bebelusi si copii pana la 8 ani, de pe piata din Romania.
Numele Miniblu a fost lansat in 2003, in cadrul celei mai mari retele de farmacii din Romania, Sensiblu. Astfel, in cadrul farmaciilor Sensiblu a fost creata zona M [detalii]

ANTREPRENOR.NET / Francize

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În SUA, 50 mil. doze de vaccin împotriva H1N1 au fost distribuite deja, dar ajung doar pentru o treime din cele 160 mil. de americani pe care autorităţile vor să-i vaccineze. Pe termen scurt, cel puţin, vaccinul împotriva gripei noi va duce la creşteri masive ale vânzărilor pentru trei producători europeni. Analiştii estimează că GSK va vinde vaccin anti-H1N1 de 1,7 miliarde de dolari în ultimul trimestru al acestui an. O cifră asemănătoare este aşteptată pentru primele trei luni din 2010. Vânzările Novartis vor ajunge la 700 mil. dolari, iar Sanofi-Aventis se aşteaptă să vândă vaccin împotriva gripei noi de peste 500 milioane de dolari. Dacă, până de curând, doar câţiva mari producători s-au axat pe vaccinuri, din cauza costurilor mari de producţie şi a veniturilor relativ mici, acest segment pare acum să câştige teren. Piaţa medicamentelor cu prescripţie, estimată la 780 miliarde de dolari la nivel global, creşte doar cu 5% pe an, în timp ce piaţa vaccinurilor va avea o creştere de 13% pe an până în 2012, potrivit specialiştilor. “Tot mai multe companii investesc în vaccinuri, ca metodă de diversificare a portofoliului şi datorită noilor tehnologii”, spune Michael Boyd, directorul Federaţiei Internaţionale a Producătorilor şi Asociaţiilor Farma (IFPMA).

Producătorul american Pfizer a intrat pe piaţa vaccinurilor prin preluarea Wyeth, pentru 68 mld. dolari, iar Abbott Laboratories a plătit 6,6 mld. dolari pentru producătorul elveţian de vaccinuri Solvay. Compania britanică GlaxoSmithKline a încheiat recent un contract în valoare de 2,2 mld. dolari cu Brazilia, pentru furnizarea de vaccinuri.

   Eminent domain? Doesn’t it just sound all welcoming and friendly? The problem is, eminent domain is being used by tyrannical governments to throw people out of their own homes to make way for projects that bring in more tax dollars. Let’s see a history of eminent domain.

   Eminent Domain became law through the fifth amendment, and to a lesser extent, from the third amendment. The fifth states in part, “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation…” The third amendment states in its entirety “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” This means that government cannot force, in times of peace, a homeowner to house troops in his home. The part ‘in a manner to be prescribed by law’ indicates the eminent domain part.

   Those two amendments were meant to protect homeowners from unlawful seizure of property by government. However, they have been turned on their heads to allow government to force someone out of their homes for any or no apparent reason. Case in point: Brooklyn, New York residents are fighting to keep their houses after they stood up to New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner and told him they don’t want to give up their homes. Here’s the skinny. Ratner, real estate tycoon, wants a new home arena for the Nets on a $4.9 billion, 22 acre site in Brooklyn. That area is also home to a Transit Authority rail yard.

   But Ratner, coveting that land, decides to take matters into his own hands, going straight to the government to plead his case. Bingo. He hits pay dirt. The New York Court of Appeals upholds the state’s eminent domain laws and basically orders the people off their own land.

   Eminent domain has a sad history. In New London, Connecticut, Suzette Kelo was forced to sell her home (See Below)

to make way for a massive office building for drug maker Pfizer. He was living the American dream, owning her own house and loving it. She didn’t want to give it up. She fought all the way to the Supreme Court. Ultimately she lost. The town began their ‘revitalization’ project and demolished her beloved house. Result? Did the town add thousands of jobs, the unemployed became millionaires and the town became the newest financial capital of the world? No, in fact the office building was never built. Now we have an empty lot where several beautiful homes once stood.

   The truth is, liberal/progressive politicians have caused this. They have no respect for people or their freedoms if it in any way lessens the tax dollars coming in. Americans need to stand up to the evils of eminent domain and liberalism because just like Suzette Kelo, it can happen to us.

Pfizer has launched a new toll free number as part of a program to provide people with free prescription drugs for up to a year to people who have lost their jobs and health insurance. To be eligible, people must have lost their job since January 1st and have been on Pfizer drugs for three months or more before that. Patients can call a toll-free number, 866-706-2400, to sign up.

On November 23 2009 Pfizer Ltd acquired for US$0.75 million certain assets related to stem cell therapies from Axordia Limited, a whole-owned subsidiary of Intercytex Group plc, and a developer of stem cell therapies for human diseases.

Erkeklerde ereksiyon sorununu tamamen halleden bu mucizevi ilaç, toplumsal yaşamda da geniş ölçüde değişiklikler yaratıyor. İşte bu mucizevi ilaç hakkında bazı bilgiler.

1. İlk olarak Pfizer tarafından çıkarılan baklava şeklindeki tabletlerin etkin maddesi sildenafil. Dünya ilaç tarihinde en hızla genişleyen satış rakamına bu ilaç ulaştı.

2. Viagra cinsel arzu uyandırmıyor ve ancak ‘partnerini cinsel olarak arzulayan’ erkeklerde ereksiyon sağlıyor. Bu nedenle, cinsel gücüne Viagra sayesinde kavuşan pek çok erkek, ‘cinsel yönden arzulayabilecekleri’ genç kadınlar uğruna eşlerinden boşandı. Viagra boşanmaları adı verilen bu süreç, feministleri çılgına çeviriyor.

3. Türkiye’de ilk başlarda ‘doktor heyeti’ raporunu istinaden yazılan reçeteyle verilen Viagra, bugün artık reçetesiz satın alınabiliyor. Amerika ve İngiltere gibi Viagra’nın reçeteye tabi olduğu ülkelerde ise online ilaç satışı yoluyla Viagra satışları gerçekleşiyor. Diabet ve tansiyon hastalarının Viagra’yı doktor kontrolünde kullanması tavsiye ediliyor.

4. Online yoldan satılan viagraların pek çoğu sahte. Batı’da ‘sahte viagra’ satışının önlenmesi için Viagra satışlarının reçetesiz hale getirilmesi konusu da tartışılıyor.

5. Viagra bir tedavi, sertleşme bozukluğu ise bir semptom. Sertleşme bozukluğunun kardiyo vasküler bir bozukluktan dolayı ortaya çıktığı durumda, doktora danışmadan viagra kullanan erkekler, kalp rahatsızlığını görmezlikten gelmiş olabiliyor. Bu durumda yaşanan kalp krizlerinin sorumlusu Viagra değil, kullanıcının zaten mevcut olan kalp sorunları oluyor.

6. Vigrayı greyfurt suyuyla almak kandaki sildenafil seviyesinde ufak bir yükselmeye neden olabilir. Aynı şekilde karpuzda bulunan sitrülin maddesi de vücut tarafından arjinin maddesine çevriliyor ve bu maddenin vücuttaki etkisi Viagranın etkisine benziyor.

Askmen Türkiye

Not: Ne olur ne olmaz. Bu makale burada da dursun. Bakarsın yarın öbürgün lazım olur

PDM10 is set to provide even greater business opportunities for exhibitors, particularly those looking to secure contracts with OEMs.  Plastics manufacturers are now citing poor quality, long shipping times and the cost of tool modification as reasons for dropping overseas contracts in favour of UK tooling suppliers.

GTMA chief executive Julia Moore confirmed the resurgent demand from UK suppliers, “OEMs find UK sourcing more flexible, timely and cost effective solution. The GTMA will use PDM10 to highlight the quality of our own supply organisations and demonstrate to OEMs why sourcing tools from the UK market remains the best option.”

Having recently established a Manufacturing Resource Centre to provide OEMs with an easier and faster route to suppliers, the GTMA is currently working on a number of initiatives for PDM10, which will maximise networking opportunities for both visitors and its members alike.

“The sterling exchange rate is a further factor in favour of UK sourcing,” said Steve Crowhurst, event director. “Injection moulders at PDM09 reported a growing interest by OEMs and I can only see this growing at PDM 10. Now is an excellent time for UK companies to benefit from this resurgent demand.”

In 2009 PDM  played host to such prominent OEM visitor names as Aston Martin Lagonda, BMW UK Manufacturing, Bosch, Braitrim, Dyson, Epson, Gillette UK, Honda, Hozelock, JCB, Linpac Allibert, P&G, Pfizer, Philips Avent, Reckitt Benckiser, Tyco Electronics and Unilever.

To register or find out how you can exhibit at PDM 10 visit www.pdmevent.com

For the past 150 years, Pfizer has pioneered the development of some of the industry’s most innovative pharmaceutical products. In 2007, Pfizer applied this “out of the box” thinking to a pilot program designed to enhance efficiency and knowledge management across project teams, and potentially speed time-to-market for new products. The pilot brought together the simple, intuitive user interface of the Microsoft® Office OneNote® 2007 note-taking program with the robust document management technology of Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. As a result, pilot participants reported a significant decrease in the number of e-mail messages they send each day, and one group reported a 15 percent increase in efficiency. Overall, the 600 participants reported a 2 percent time savings per week, which represents a cost savings of approximately U.S.$2.25 million.

Situation

Since 1849, Pfizer has been dedicated to the development of safe, effective, and affordable medicines for the prevention and treatment of diseases across a broad range of therapeutic areas. According to 2008 industry sales reports, Pfizer is the largest research-based biomedical and pharmaceutical company in the world, with a portfolio that includes such top-selling drugs as Lipitor, Viagra, Zoloft, and Zyrtec.

To maintain its position as a global leader in the healthcare industry, Pfizer invests heavily in research and development. In 2008, the company spent U.S.$7.5 billion—15 percent of its $48.3 billion revenue—on research and development efforts. For Pfizer, increasing the efficiency of research and development teams is a top priority—the sooner that new prescription medicines and pharmaceutical products can be brought to market, the sooner they can begin to help people live longer, healthier lives

Faster time-to-market is also important from a business perspective. In the pharmaceutical industry, a company owns exclusive rights to a therapeutic compound for 10 years from the date that the patent is issued. “We file patents on new compounds several years before we actually get them to market,” says Chris Barber, Associate Research Fellow, Worldwide Medicinal Chemistry, Pfizer. “If we can shave even a few months off of our development cycle and increase the number of months of exclusivity in the market—that can have a huge impact on our bottom line.”

Ben Gardner (Biology Customer Engagement Manager, Worldwide Technology, Research and Development Informatics, Pfizer) cites the sales of Lipitor as an example. “Lipitor is the top selling drug in the world,” he explains. “In 2008, sales of Lipitor generated $12.4 billion. So, each additional month of exclusivity would equal about one billion dollars in revenue. Not all drugs are like that, but you can see how a seemingly small time savings can actually generate significant revenue.”

With this in mind, Gardner and his team began looking for a technology solution that would help project groups work more efficiently. “Drug discovery involves tens, hundreds, even thousands of compounds,” Barber explains. “They all get screened, and the information is sent back to the chemists to say, ‘Make more like this,’ or, ‘Stop making compounds like this.’ The process is a continuous cycle. Pfizer has developed a solid infrastructure for recording individual data points against each individual compound. But what we didn’t have was an easy, accessible way of storing—and subsequently sharing—the knowledge that we collected or the rationale for decisions we made during a project.”

Over the years, Pfizer has also adopted a number of disparate document filing repositories. “Unfortunately, they’re all very cumbersome,” says Gardner. “Research team members perform different types of experiments, and traditionally they’d each file their findings in separate repositories. In order to understand what we learned from an experiment, we had to look in three or four different legacy systems. Also, the documents had no meaning whatsoever in their titles, so we had to open each individual file to find out what it contained. We eventually began saving files on our desktops or in e-mail folders because we wanted to have seamless access to our files, whether we were online or offline. This was something that we simply couldn’t do with our existing file share systems.”

Solution

In 2007, Pfizer authorized a pilot program at its Research and Development Informatics Division in Sandwich, England, to explore the use of the Microsoft® Office OneNote® 2007 note-taking program. Pfizer had already introduced an enterprisewide content management strategy based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and pilot coordinators were eager to combine Office OneNote 2007 with SharePoint Server 2007.

“Essentially, we’re using Office OneNote 2007 to provide an intuitive, user-friendly interface to the SharePoint Server 2007 document library,” Gardner explains. All content added to or created in OneNote 2007 is stored in SharePoint Server 2007. Users can continue to work in shared OneNote 2007 notebooks even when they’re offline, and the notebooks synchronize automatically when the users connect to the network. “All of the complexities are managed in the background, so the user experience is seamless,” adds Gardner. (See Figure 1.)

Initially, Pfizer conducted the pilot with two Therapeutic Area (TA) teams, but word quickly spread amongst the research community about this novel approach to information sharing. As a result and in partnership with Research and Development leadership, the pilot was expanded into a full scale deployment to the entire Research and Development division at Sandwich, totaling approximately 600 users. Currently, all TA drug discovery project teams use shared OneNote 2007 notebooks as their primary method of communication and information sharing, with approximately 70 OneNote 2007 project notebooks in daily use across the division.

Pilot participants commented that Office OneNote 2007 is intuitive and simple to use, and it works easily with other Microsoft Office products such as Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheet software, the Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentation graphics program, and Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging and collaboration client. Users add new content into the shared project notebook using a drag-and-drop operation, and OneNote 2007 automatically manages the task of loading these changes to the master notebook stored on SharePoint Server 2007. (See Figure 2.)

“In many ways, using OneNote 2007 is as simple as writing in a paper notebook, except that we can do so much more,” says Nuzrul Haque, Customer Engagement Manager, Worldwide Technology, Research and Development Informatics, Pfizer. “We can easily drop an Excel graph or an Outlook e-mail message into a OneNote notebook. We can insert PowerPoint slides that describe a series of compounds and why they’re interesting, or make detailed notes that describe what our next steps will be. With OneNote 2007, capturing all of this additional information doesn’t require any extra effort—it’s simply part of our normal workflow process. And, from a corporate point of view, the data is backed up and more secure because it’s stored in a SharePoint Server 2007 document library.”

Before the use of shared OneNote 2007 notebooks, Pfizer lacked an easy way for scientists to describe the rationale behind decisions they made during a project, or to find information generated by previous project teams. “Now, with Office OneNote 2007, we generate a summary page that’s publishable to our corporate wiki and therefore becomes searchable and sharable across the enterprise,” Haque says. “I see the potential to create a library of OneNote 2007 project notebooks so that—in five years’ time when researchers come across similar problems to the ones we’re facing today—they can search for and find the OneNote 2007 project notebook created by a previous research team. They’ll say, ‘Here’s the graph that I need to generate to understand what to do next.’ This solution could profoundly change the way we collaborate, now and in the future.”

Benefits

To maintain its position as an industry leader, Pfizer realized that it needed to increase the productivity and efficiency of its project teams. The company developed an innovative solution that blends the intuitive user interface of Office OneNote 2007 with the robust document management technology of Office SharePoint Server 2007. The resulting solution potentially speeds time-to-market, boosts time and cost savings, improves collaboration, and enhances knowledge management.

Faster Time-to-Market

In the pharmaceutical industry, developing a new drug is about making decisions, such as what type of compound to make next and how to test it. These decisions are enabled by the knowledge gained from the creation and testing of previous compounds. By using Office OneNote 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007, Pfizer employees have easy access to centrally located information so they can make the right decisions quickly.

When pilot participants were asked to quantify the amount of time they save by using the solution, approximately 70 percent said they saved 30 minutes or more each week. The mean time savings weighted across all responders was approximately 45 minutes each week, for a 2 percent time savings.

“Even a 2 percent time savings is significant when you consider that every month of market exclusivity can equal millions of dollars in revenue,” says Haque. “That’s why we’re excited. We see potential for OneNote 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 to help us get our products to market sooner. Previously, when we needed to generate documents or put reports together, we had to go to five different places. Now, all of the information is in one place. We can make better decisions more quickly, which could result in shorter development cycles.”

In 2008, the average revenue for all Pfizer pharmaceuticals was $1.75 billion, meaning that if Pfizer could bring a typical product to market more quickly, the company could potentially generate additional revenues of approximately $145.8 million each month.

Cost and Time Savings

Based on participant feedback, Gardner calculated an approximate cost savings and return on investment (ROI). “If time savings alone was used to measure ROI, then—assuming that one full-time employee equates to a $200,000 cost per year—a 2 percent time savings equates to $3,750 per user per year,” he explains. With 600 users participating in the initial deployment, this represents a potential cost savings of $2.25 million per year. If Pfizer decided to expand the use of Office OneNote 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 to even a fraction of its 100,000 employees, the cost savings could be astronomical.

Gardner adds, “While there is a big difference between saving people time and converting the saved time into new productive work, this figure does provide a baseline for estimating the value of shared notebooks—particularly if we wrap the many other benefits, that are far more difficult to quantify, into this figure.”

One project-specific example of time savings came from the MC4 project team in the Gerintourinary Therapeutic Area at Sandwich. Using the “agile processes” development model (based on the self-organization of teams to handle the complexities inherent in development projects), the team completed its project 30 percent faster than the standard operating process. “The research project leader estimated that 15 percent of this time savings could be directly attributed to the use of a shared OneNote 2007 notebook,” Gardner says.

Using Office OneNote 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 as a shared information repository, project teams reported a significant reduction in the number of e-mail messages they sent each day. They also reported a reduction in the number of post-meeting e-mail messages they received—from three for each agenda item to zero. In addition, Pfizer estimates the amount of data stored on the company’s Microsoft Exchange Server decreased from eight or more Office Outlook appointments (multiplied by the size of the file, and multiplied again by the number of people on the distribution list) to one Outlook appointment for each user.

“Now if I receive an e-mail message with a large attachment, I can drop it into OneNote 2007 and deal with it when I feel like it rather than because my inbox is getting full,” Barber says. “That’s a fantastic change for me.”

Improved Engagement and Team Cohesion

A number of anecdotal reports indicate that teams are displaying improved engagement and cohesion. “Giving each team member responsibility for and management of a section of the OneNote 2007 project notebook is resulting in the building of trust, the transparency of activity, and the strengthening of ties within the team,” Gardner says. “This means that individuals feel more involved in the project as a whole. Junior members of project teams are including information in their presentations and reports from other sections of the project. Previously, they weren’t doing this because the information wasn’t easily accessible. Now, we’re seeing an increase in the baseline level of understanding across the whole project. In other words, the scientists are more engaged. The value of that is far reaching, but difficult to quantify.”

Enhanced Knowledge Management and Decision Making

In user feedback surveys, 70 percent of pilot participants credited the use of shared OneNote 2007 notebooks with “enhancing or strongly enhancing” the way that they work. Additionally, 60 percent of managers and project leaders indicated that shared OneNote 2007 notebooks improved their access to decision-making data.
“Through the use of shared OneNote 2007 notebooks we are—possibly for the first time—actually realizing the promise of knowledge management,” says Gardner. “We are seeing improvements in the efficiency of working, the capture of tacit along with explicit knowledge, and enhancement of team cohesion. In addition, by using OneNote 2007 in conjunction with SharePoint Server 2007, all of this information is being captured in a fully searchable system that is compliant with Pfizer’s content management strategy.”

Barber concludes, “I think one of the most important results of this pilot is a dramatic change in culture. People are starting to believe that the information they’re generating is actually part of the whole project, rather than something that resides solely on their desktops and that will eventually be lost in a file share. We’re shifting to a culture of knowledge sharing, of saying that this information is for all of us. Capturing and sharing rationale in this way will help us make better decisions and make them more quickly. We can build on our
knowledge base, rather than starting from scratch.”

More bad news for hormone replacement drugs. More women should turn to natural menopause relief

Pfizer Jury Awards $28 Million Over Hormone Drugs (Update2) – Bloomberg.com

By Sophia Pearson

 

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) — Two Pfizer Inc. units were ordered to pay a total of $28 million in punitive damages to an Illinois woman who developed breast cancer after taking the companies’ menopause drugs.

Wyeth should pay $16 million and Pharmacia & Upjohn $12 million to Donna Kendall of Decatur, Illinois, a state-court jury in Philadelphia said today. The jury ruled Nov. 20 that the units owed Kendall $6.3 million in compensatory damages.

The verdict brings to more than $165 million the total awarded in cases linking hormone-replacement drugs and breast cancer since they began going to trial in 2006. More than 6 million women have taken the medicines to treat menopause symptoms including hot flashes, night sweats and mood swings.

“Neither the awards of punitive damages nor the liability verdicts were supported by the evidence or the law,” Pfizer spokesman Christopher Loder said in a phone interview. “We plan to challenge both decisions in post-trial motions and, if necessary, through an appeal.”

Until 1995, many patients combined Premarin, Wyeth’s estrogen-based drug, with progestin-laden Provera, made by Upjohn. Wyeth combined the two hormones in Prempro. The drugs are still on the market.

New York-based Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, completed the $68 billion purchase of Wyeth on Oct. 15. The company reported 2008 net income of $8.1 billion on sales of $48.3 billion.

Pfizer rose 26 cents to $18.62 at 2:32 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

The case is Kendall v. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc., 040600965, Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sophia Pearson in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court at 7613 or spearson3@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: November 23, 2009 14:45 EST

menopause, pfizer,

I enjoy seeing ANY kind of progress in pharma’s use of social media – most of us who are involved realize that we’re still going to be in the shallow end of the pool for a while (with all the regulatory uncertainty) – but when any company tries to responsibly move the needle, they deserve a shout-out.

Some weeks back, I tweaked my friends at Pfizer about an apparent lack of progress in some of their social media efforts. I’m glad to say that some interesting developments have come to light in recent days, underscored by Ray Kerins at a recent BDI event in NYC.

Applause lines:

1. Their Twitter account (@pfizer_news) now has an identifiable, named person behind it (Jen Kokell) who showed up at the event along with Ray. Also, the tweets are beginning to feel a little more personal, even if most of them are still one-way communications. Bravo #1.

2. Pfizer has launched an internal platform for employee discussion, where (apparently) just about anything goes, apart from the usual restrictions like cursing, etc. This is private, of course, but an encouraging development – I still think that much of the initial growth of social media in pharma will be with internal solutions that break down silos, encourage openness, and help people find information from their colleagues. Bravo #2.

3. A great idea is the recently launched Medicine Safety website, for patient education in a completely non-promotional environment. This type of interactive educational website is a great use of an on-line forum for helping improve the experience of utilizing medicine. It also has a link to Medwatch for reporting adverse events. Bravo #3.

4. They’re also experimenting with group public blogging (Think Science Now), to try to bring the voice of their scientist community into the open. It’s hard to say how successful this will be, but certainly a Bravo (#4) is deserved for the idea and effort.

5. I’ll save my biggest Bravo for last. And that’s Ray Kerins’ stated approach that they’re just going GET OUT THERE, be engaged in the dialogue, figure it out, and if they don’t yet know how to measure/quantify results – well, that’s not going to stop them from starting and evolving. This is exactly the approach I seek to encourage – measure what and when you can, but don’t sit at the starting line when being involved in social networking can bring about so much potential good over time.

I ended my prior post this way: There are much smaller companies who are being quite pro-active in this space. This would be a very good time for Pfizer to seize the mantle of leadership. Hmmm…maybe that’s happening sooner rather than later!

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It’s Thanksgiving week! We’ll plan on publishing the Daily on Monday/Tuesday, then take the rest of the week off from news reporting. Unless somebody buys somebody else. That, we’ll report!

TODAY’S NEWS

Sanofi chief wants to do things differently. Liked this juicy quote:  Mr Viehbacher added: “The best scientists are often lousy leaders [and] managers. You had a research and development god who hoped a blockbuster emerged. When it didn’t, you merged. The model was flawed. I think the mistake we made in our industry was, we made R&D organisations that were very big, very complex, very difficult to manage, and we killed the innovative spirit”…more

Morphine – kill pain, grow tumors?? – Two new studies add to growing evidence that morphine and other opiate-based painkillers may promote the growth and spread of cancer cells…more

Pfizer reaps one of the consequences of merging: inherited lawsuits – Two Pfizer Inc. units’ hormone- replacement therapy drugs caused an Illinois woman’s breast cancer, making them liable for at least $6.3 million in damages, a Philadelphia jury ruled today…more

B-I hoping to take a big bite out of warfarin – Just 2.4 percent of patients given Pradaxa for six months after their initial treatment developed clots in the legs and lungs, similar to the 2.2 percent rate for those given the generic drug warfarin, according to an abstract of the so-called Recover study posted on the American Society of Hematology Web site last week. There was no increased risk of major bleeding, a complication of blood-thinning treatments…more

RECOMMENDED

Specialty/Oncology training and development. If you’re looking to enhance your training program for specialty reps, we have just the providers for you.  Contact us (stevew at impactiviti dot com, or phone at 973-947-7429) for recommendations.

PLUS

What about that pesky Social Media/ROI question? My thoughts…

JUST FOR FUN

———-

Subscribe to the Impactiviti blog via e-mail (which will bring you Impactiviti Daily – a brief of the day’s top pharma news)

Sign up for the Impactiviti Connection twice-monthly e-newsletter (see sample)

Connect with Steve Woodruff

In the news . . .

Wired writer tries to find out if it’s possible to disappear in the digital world.

England’s proposed new copyright laws are extremely controversial.

Insurance company takes away Canadian woman’s long-term sick leave benefit after Facebook photos indicate she wasn’t suffering from depression.

Sony e-Reader attempts to compete with Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, but appears to be unavailable for holiday season. 

The MPAA aggressively pushes protective legislation.

City of Los Angeles wants $3 million repayment for Michael Jackson memorial.

Barnes & Noble blocks hostile takeover by billionaire Ron Burkle.

During latest off-shore pirate scuffle, soldiers resort to bullets after Long Range Acoustic Device proves ineffective.

TLC seeks Jon Gosselin’s secret, hand-written contract with personal assistant in breach of contract case.

Olympic gold medalist Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain stripped of 1,500 meter title for PED disqualification. Meanwhile, Time.com highlights the top sporting cheats of all time.

FDA approves Pfizer’s updated pneumococcal disease vaccine for children.

The Large Hadron Collider is back online.

American Airlines fires web designer for responding courteously to online complaint.

Sixty-nine-year-old online predator in Wales busted by wife, who posed as minor from computer in next room.

Tres piezas de la agencia Langland (UK) para prevenir de los riesgos reales de comprar medicinas por internet. Campaña patrocinada por Pfizer.

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