MedIntelliBlog™

Just a simple thought this week…share your company’s competitive intelligence across your organization. DO NOT restrict it to a few senior management team members or within a specific department. If you do not share it, your company (and YOU) are more likely doomed to an inevitable blunder.

Case in point, a few days ago an associate and I were talking about a recent peripheral vascular clinical trial…(the name of the companies and trial are withheld to protect confidences. But to make it real, insert one of your past company’s names and a pivotal trial that was critical at the time. The salient point is the lesson learned.)…Each week the clinical research team tracked medical conference proceedings, The Gray Sheets, press releases, any source that had hints of what the outcome of the competing sponsor’s trial would mean for its own stent. But the marketing team was confident that trial results would prove in favor of stenting. The team was preoccupied with executing its marketing strategy – developing collateral materials, demo kits, communications for its customers, patients and sales team. The list went on. However, no one in the marketing department, not even the senior managers bothered to meet with the clinical research team until the trial results were within weeks of release. The results did not favor stenting. It caught managers in marketing and up the line flat-footed. Heads rolled and many were demoted or fired.

There is major lesson to be learned here – enlighten all the members on your project team. Give them access to the same intelligence that you subscribe to. Your companies have enterprise subscriptions, so use them to keep your teams informed.

And don’t be cheap. If there is a per-user subscription fee, pay it for each of the key folks on your team. Everyone has to be informed and up-to-speed to do his/her job well. The few extra dollars spent are inconsequential compared to the expense of an entire 5-10 year development program derailed and jobs lost.

Next week, we’ll explore a new breed, a hybrid between clinical research and traditional marketing…”clinical marketing.”

Stay alert, be intelligent -

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko

Senior Editor

This week in Seattle at the Washington Biotech and Biomedical Association (WBBA) Innovation Northwest 2010 conference, the organizers convened an outstanding panel of three of the remaining top life science reporters in the region. These highly respected business and industry reporters included Kristi Heim from the last remaining regional newspaper, the Seattle Times; Keith Seinfeld from one of the local National Public Radio (NPR) stations, KPLU; and Luke Timmerman from the newly emerging online biotech and tech source, Xconomy. All three agreed that with the wrenchingly painful slow demise of the print newspaper industry, the meat and bone of their news industry is nearing extinction. With evaporating operating budgets from loss of large advertisers and classified ads, newspapers’ staffs are shrinking. Along with them go our diamonds – investigative reporters. And along with them goes our collective “informed state,” our intelligence as a nation.

This disruptive force is epidemic across the U.S. It’s scary but excitingly new.

At the same time new sources of news and information are exploding around us. The Economist* calls news and information “data.” But with no standards to manage that data, delivering it in one or two formats, or to editorialize to give that data a frame of reference, we are inundated. Bombardment comes from the relatively new – emails, feeds, twitters, online social and professional networking sites, cells, text messages – and the old – newspapers, magazines, TV, radio. The list goes on.

What do we do about it nationally? There are many business models being developed by those who are better informed on comprehensive news investigation and delivery than I.

In the biotech and medtech industries, we can do much to take responsibility for keeping ourselves informed about medical advances and medical industry news. To remain intelligent ourselves we must be “plugged-in,” informed. The key is to do so without becoming overwhelmed with data or worse, sound bites.

Just as our pharmaceutical and biotech industries portend the rise of “personalized medicine,” so should each of us now pursue “personalized news” or “personalized intelligence.” This conscious management of our information sources is essential to making timely, wise decisions in our medical business sectors. We as senior managers cannot afford to miss critical “nuggets” or “diamonds” of information or to waste our team’s time digging for them. Our sources need to be laser sharp and precise, eliminating extraneous distractions. These sources need to be intelligently selected tools that effectively integrate into one or at most two of our communications devices to best serve our needs.

Start simply, intelligently. In marketing stats or math classes when you used multi-variant analysis you introduced or changed one variable at a time. You did not know what variable affected a precise outcome until you changed just that one variable. This is the same with your sources of information. With your device of choice in hand, it’s time to move onto selecting medical intelligence source as tools to equip your intelligence toolkit. We’ll start those first steps later this month.

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko

Senior Editor

* To read more about this subject visit The Economist editorial page, “The data deluge,” and associated feature article. “Data, data everywhere,” in the February 27, 2010 issue at The Economist online.

Keeping up with the deluge of information that is coming at you every day – from email, news feeds and online…even low tech mail, newspapers, periodicals, radio and TV – is becoming daunting. Wherever you are it never ends. Streaming 24/7.

The periodical The Economist perfectly summarizes our present situation in its February 27, 2010 issue editorial page, “The data deluge:”

“Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analyzing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still. Even so, the data deluge is already starting to transform business, government, science and everyday life…It has great potential for good – as long as consumers, companies and governments make the right choices…“

That is what MedIntelliBlog is about – helping you learn how to make the right choices, intelligent choices, when managing information in your daily business lives.

The editors at The Economist go on to say that, “Plucking the diamond from the waste,” has been mastered by a mere handful of industries – credit card companies, insurance firms, mobile phone operators, and retailers – and, of course, government agencies.*

You as executives of the life sciences industry need to embrace doing the same. You need to master the deluge of information, culling it to get the precise intelligence that you need.

The editors at MedIntelliBase have conceived this blogspace, at Blog.MedIntelliBase.com, to:

• give you insights on how to remain focused on getting the precise intelligence you need
• prevent you and your organization from becoming overwhelmed by information overload
• most importantly, prevent you from missing critical nuggets of intelligence that will help you make the right business decision…the first time…and every time

Each week MedIntelliBlog editors will post proven solutions to the information deluge and offer quick tips to selecting intelligent management tools. To read more in the coming weeks join our subscriber list.

We look forward to helping you master your market, business and competitor intelligence.

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko
Senior Editor

* To read more about this subject visit The Economist editorial page, “The data deluge,” and associated feature article. “Data, data everywhere,” in the February 27, 2010 issue at the The Economist online.