QDIS Blog

Forbes has a report on Novartis purchasing the rights to NicQb, an anti-smoking vaccine from Cytos Biotechnology AG up to $500 million. The initial upfront payment is $29 million.

Novartis Buys Right to Experimental Drug - Forbes.com:

It will be interesting to watch and see how NicQb comes along. Currently it is in phase II studies but if successful could be a huge success. To my knowledge, this is the only vaccine being developed to combat nicotine addition.

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Since I use Ambien on occasion it was good to hear Dr. Reddy’s Lab is no approved to sell generic Ambien.

Dr. Reddy’s Gets Generic Ambien Approval - Forbes.com:

I was actually behind someone at my local pharmacy recently and they were concerned they thought they had been given the wrong prescription since they did not recognize the name. The pharmacist explained that it was the generic version of Ambien. This could be a big blow to Sanofi-Aventis since they had sales of $1.2 billion in the last year.

While Dr. Reddy’s Lab is the first, there will be several others and the competition will bring down the price. At least 10 other companies have approved generic versions.

Both my wife and I use it on occasion and I love it. I especially use it when traveling to get my body in sync with the local time. I should note that it has recently come under scrutiny and the labeling has been strengthened to warn about possible side effects.

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Seems my old company is now paying $10.5 million to resolve claims that they were promoting Trisenox for uses that were not approved.

Cell Therapeutics to pay $10.5 million:

I always thought they were leaving them selves open for this sort of problems back when I was working for them given the huge amount of off-label use. When a huge portion of your drug is being used for diseases it isn’t approved for, you are going to raise some eyebrows.

I should note that “Cell Therapeutics does not admit any wrongdoing in the matter”. And we all know what that really means.

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Express scripts is now reporting that in five eyars, by 2012, biotech drugs will account for 25% of all expenditures on drugs. The market was $54 billion in 2006 and is expected to reach $99 billion by 2010.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Business > Biotechnology — Spending on biotech drug prescriptions rising:

I think this shows you why so many big pharma companies are either buying or investing in biotech. Also, since there is currently no biogenerics industry and regulation is only now starting to be worked on it is no wonder.

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This news is somewhat dated now but the M&A activity in the pharmaceutical industry continues. Now AsraZeneca is purchasing Medimmune for $15.6 billion.

AstraZeneca to buy MedImmune for $15.6B - Yahoo! News

The two main products of interest are the children’s respiratory drug Synagis and a refrigerated version of FluMist inhaled influenza vaccine. This follows the current trend of major pharma increasing interest in vaccines. Novartis purchased Chiron and both Sanofi-Aventis and GlaxoSmithKline have sizable vaccine businesses.

MedImmune had until recently, actively resisted any such take-over moves. I’m not sure why they finally relented and went forward with AstraZeneca. Maybe they finally got the price they wanted.

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It isn’t surprising that the FDA rejected Merck’s NDA for Arcoxia, its follow on to Vioxx since an advisory committee already voted 20-1 against its approval. Forbes has an article on it.

FDA Rejects Merck’s Vioxx Successor - Forbes.com:

It is interesting to note though that Arrcoxia is on sale in 63 countries world-wide already. It be be interesting to see what effect if any it has on world-wide sales.

Technorati Tags: Arcoxia, Merck, Vioxx

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Unfortunately I didn’t take notes on Sunday during the talks so I’m having to write this from memory so it might not be as detailed as the previous two days. Most of the slides from the presentations will eventually be available to AIIP members on the AIIP website.

Information Entrepreneur: Lesson Learned from Building a National Library
Sam Richter, Business Information Resources, Research Tools, Online Library, JJ Hill

Sam Richter took us through the development that took the James J. Hill Library from an obscure business reference library to having a major internet presence. The presentation contained the many programs and products geared towards small business that the James J. Hill Library has developed.

The Most Common Mistakes Self-Employed People Make
Christine Hamilton-Pennel, Economic Intelligence Specialist

Christine gave us a list of the common mistakes self-employed people make.

1. Not knowing your basic Strategy
2. Not Understanding Your financial Needs
3. Assuming you can handle all the functions
4. Marketing

Managing a Research Project From A to Z
Marcy Phelps, Phelps Research

Lessons Learned

• Your network is your most valuable resource
• Subcontracting parts of the research provides clients with high quality results
• Extra effort up front saves time and money

Cynthia Shamel, Shamel Information Services

Lessons Learned

1. Networking plants seeds that you never know when they will sprout
2. There is nothing like a mandate form the top to give a project traction
3. Executive committees have a short attention span
4. When the scopes creeps, offer an amended proposal
5. See lesson 1
6. Educate yourself by researching, reading and talking to experts
7. Corporate employees come and go
8. It’s OK to price on value
9. Do what you do best and hire the rest
10. You can’t put a price on internal cooperation
11. Allow plenty of time to do quality work
12. Celebrate the successes, then get back to work

Change as Opportunity
Rita E. Miller, Motivational Speaker

Rita gave an excellent talk on change and dealing with stress. It was great to learn 10 tips for dealing with change

1. Determined optimism- ask “what could go right?”
2. Say YES to learning
3. Take a realistic vs. a perfectionist approach
4. Allow for venting if needed
5. Find your control point
6. Ask questions
7. Remind yourself that new learning involves practice over time
8. Develop a change support network
9. Reward yourself
10. Consider the value of humor

You betcha!

Look for photos from the event soon. I hope to get them uploaded to Flicker by the weekend.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Pittsburgh, PA April 30 to May 4th, 2008. Come and bring someone new!
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Roger Summit Award Lecture
Ambient Findability and the Future of Search
Peter Morville, Semantic Studios

The following is just my impressions of the talk and not a full well thought out posting. It’s just sort of my thoughts. Peter has made the presentation available on his website and the link is at the end sf this posting.

Provide multiple ways to access information.
Multiple disciplines needed to design websites
got tired of “usability. and has a slide describing it in more detail
Talked about the interrelatedness in peoples mind of findabilty and credibility. people tend to trust and believe pages that have higher ranking?!
Gave case study of Cancer.org site and how it was redesigned based on users searches.
Future movement towards taking things learned on the web through interface design into physical space. Good case study from Maya.
Findability: the ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime.
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention
Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate Economist
Dilbert version: information is gushing toward your brain like a firehose aimed at a teacup.
Recommended The Transparent Society by David Brin
Need to combine tagging and standard taxonomy
Amazon has done much for navigation and organization of a rich information system.
use not just the long tail but alos the “fat head”. use that information as a guide.
Mentioned Buzzillion and Clusty as hybrid systems of standard and tagging

link on the web: http://semanticstudios.com/aiip.pdf

Mistakes I Made and How I Recovered
Margaret King, Karen Klein, and Jan Davis

Margaret: Make sure you have a contract in place if you are doing business with anyone defining the relationship.
Lost relationship, lost revenues and marketing opportunities due to on-going problems.
Partner was handling books and it cost to get that fixed.
Just because you are friends doesn’t mean they are a good business partner.
Try to keep emotions out of the business as much as possible.

Karen: Related a story of a problem client not responding and then not approving the invoice for work agreed to and completed in a timely fashion. Used her mentor to bounce ideas of off.
Sent a letter to the manager and copied COO saying she wouldn’t be able to do business with them if she didn’t get paid and related that this was very scary.

• Don’t ignore red flags.
• Divide projects into chunks.
• Strength your disclaimer that they are paying for the services not results.
• Listen to your conscious

Jan: Emails can lead to problems and misunderstandings.

• Follow your instincts.
• Put things in writing.
• Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and talk.
• Don’t lowball your projects.
• Make sure and understand what it is your client wants.

Forming Strategic Alliances
Ann Potter, Suzane Sabroski, and Jane John

Ann: Retired after 20 years having done market research, secondary and primary research as well as competitive intelligence
Had 2-3 formal alliances, 4-5 informal long-time alliances and many informal long standing subcontractors and partners.

Why form alliances?

• leverage your efforts
• expand your network
• develop teamwork skills and other skills
• smooth income fluctuations

Think in terms of assumptions about relationships
Take inventory of personal styles

Suzanne: Background as a corporate librarian. Started her work in 1995 and changed name to Sabroski & Associates in 2002.
Has had one formal partnership in place for 4 years.

• Prevents isolation
• Gives you the ability to enhance relationships and communication skills
• Expand your business
• Consistent work can develop.

Suggestions

• offer unique service
• do several projects together first
• define roles

Jane: 5 years in business creating 20-40 page market reports
Has used 3 subcontractors for telephone, web search, and accounting charts and various professional consultants.
can do more work and be more profitable as well as more control and more fun!
start small and build relationships
have one firm take the lead.
allow time to integrate results

Business meeting ran long and I missed the first afternoon session.

The afternoon session were again three concurrent tracks.

Lessons Learned From the Client from #@*
Liga Greenfield
Characteristics of the client from hell

• Unrealistic
• Demanding
• Opinionated
• Indecisive
• Secretive
• Deadbeat: don’t pay their bills
• Thief: take detailed proposals and se it for their own gain

Manna from Heaven, many promises, well-paying, etc.

• Good people and ones that were trusted.
• Recognition and Respect
• Growth
• Friendship mixed with business
• Foregone conclusion
• Obvious gaps in the plan
• Lack of consensus
• Greed
• Delusions of grandeur

Results:

• timelines changes
• project goals
• trouble playing bills

Rising from ashes

• developed a game plan
• contacted client and VC board
• pulled together to do the impossible
• contacted creditors and made arrangements
• maintained contacts even though not involved anymore
• actively solicited business from VC firm.

Two of the VC folks are on the BioMed{harmIS advisory board
number of other projects
have gotten more from the VC firm

Suggestions

• put expectation in writing.
• expectations only in writing including scope and cost changes
• learn from both success and mistakes
• define specific lesson learned when things do go wrong.

You can learn what to do and what not to do from both good and bad clients.

How to Conduct Primary Research and Still Make Money in a Business
Amy Hebard

Gave brief background and then talked about what goes into performing primary research

Objectives

• Market research defined
• Market Research topics
• conducting primary research
• new qual & quant tools
• opportunities
• key takeaways
• Begin with the end in mind
• clear goals and objectives
• research design
• validity; right people
• reliability; enough data
• good questions
• clean data
• right analysis
• clear story

Evening was fantastic at the Como Conservatory and Zoo. We had about an hour to browse and look around and then had dinner. It was a great evening.

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Here are some of my reflections on Friday program of the 2007 AIIP conference.

Awards
Eiko Shaul, Presidents Award
Ed Vawter (your truly), Sue Rugge Memorial Award
Jan Davis, Connections Writers Award
Jothi Nedungadi, Myra T. Grenier Award

Keynote Speech
ichael Roby - Motivational Speaker | Sales Trainer | Keynote Speaker | Sales Coach

Becoming the Best… and Getting Better

A very good keynote talking about how small changes to increase productivity can lead to large increases in income. He use the example of Tiger Woods who earner 10 million from PGA tour (not including endorsements) and another player earner $570,000. But Tiger Woods was only 4.2% better in terms of strokes not 17 times better if you base it on income. The take homer lesson; small changes can have a large impact.

6 keys to Critical Success Factors (CSF’s)
1. Business Plan
2. Marketing
3. Selling
4. Service
5. Continuing Education
6. Administration

multiply each CSF on scale 1-3 gives dramatically different results

A business plan is your road map to success.

basic components
a. objectives,
b. SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
c. strategic plan,
d. tactical plan

Give 3 touches per month, email, phone call, direct mail for A client list.
When people think of me they think of X, but more importantly, when people think of X, they think of me.
This is a different way to think about who you are and what you do.
Check out Growing Your Business! for Mark LeBlanc’s book about growing your business; 45 min to read and a lifetime to master.
Another good book What’s your brand? by Oren Harari

Marketing is selling to the masses, selling is knee-to-knee; asking for that order by leading your client to a logical conclusion.

Service
keeping promises by giving them more than they pay for.
fixing problems
finding solutions
up-selling / next selling
DEFINE “Excellent Service”

prompt response phone calls and correspondence
prompt response to request for proposal
coming in on time and on budget

Give excellent service to all and exceptional service to some.

Continuing education
product/process knowledge
process knowledge of how you run your business
entrepreneurial knowledge
people knowledge

Administration
RYBLAB: run your business like a business
Stick to your expertise
Out-source
Systems & Processes
not in the information business, you’re in the peoplwe business!!

How do you measure up on the 6 CSF’s?
What areas can you improve and how can you improve?
How will you benchmark progress?

How much is your business changing?

there were several concurrent session in the afternoon and here are the ones I attended.

Medical Insurance for the Self-Employed
William Lehnertz
TLC Financial Inc.

Gave brief background and history of employer proved insurance from WWII

Basically said to get health insurance with high deductible from a private carrier and use health savings account

He gave some excellent resources and health savings account information which will be on the members section of the aiip site.

The Latest & Greatest Developments in Legal, Medical, and Government Information.
Ruth Balkin, Peggy Garvin and Cliff Kalibjian

All three gave a good overview of changes and new information in their relevant fields.

Beyond Maps
Wendy Cobrda

Gave a good intro to geographical information services.
Geo info can reside in information such as telephone numbers.
Geocoding software is a tool to take address information and turn that into spatial coordinates
Explained what geocodes are; similar to say a Dewey decimal system
What can you do with the coding? Summarize data, relate it to other spatial objects.
Wendy gave several interesting examples.
There is a lot of information that is spatial oriented and can be very useful!

Entering the SPY-ders Web; What Would YOU Do?
Arthur Weiss and Dee Richardson
The attendees worked thru scenarios dealing with various ethical situations. All the situations were based on true real life situations.

Table Top Tips.

Amelia Kassel and Mary Ellen Bates had a roundtable discussion on marketing Mark Goldstein and I did one on technology issues. We basically sat around and discussed technologies and answered folks questions about a variety of subjects. Both were well attended and seemed at least in my opinion to go very well. Hopefully folks came away from it with some useful information and got their questions answered.

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I apologize for not posting for a while. I have recently taken a new job and have been busy trying to get podcasts set up for my church and for an organization I belong to. These have eaten up large portions of my time.

I do have a whole bunch of articles I hope to comment on soon. Stay tuned!

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