PharmaVOICE WHAT’S NEW NEW HEALTHCARERELATED PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND COMPANIES
Carbon Healthcare Communications, a new division of CommonHealth,has been launched as a professional advertising and promotion agency to serve the needs of “highscience”brands. The agen cy is targeting biopharmaceutical and emerging companies as well as prod ucts for special populationssuchaschil dren, the elderly, and immunocompro mised patients. The business unit, which is based in Wayne, N.J., is led by President NanskeWood.Before joining CarbonHealth care, Ms.Wood was executive VP and manag ing partner at Adient, a sister CommonHealth company.Ms.Wood has been with the Common Health organization for more than seven years. Carbon Healthcare Communications, through its ties to CommonHealth, offers small and emerging companies the resources and strength of a large agency. “The kind of services we offer are anything from providing more bench strength support for smaller clients to being a large healthcare marketing com munication group,”Ms.Wood says.“We are not large, but we have the strength and resources of an indus try leader with access to all services within Common Health,which enables us to be flexible. We can be as small as a client needs, and have access to more resources if working with a larger client.” “CommonHealth’s primary focus always has been about growth — first and foremost for our clients’ brands, but also for our own organic growth and the capabilities we have to offer those clients,” says Matt Giegerich, president and CEO of Com monHealth. “Carbon Healthcare both expands and deepens our service offering in a critical and emerg ing healthcare sector.” Joining Ms. Wood in managing the direction of the daytoday business for Carbon Healthcare is Cindy Johnson, senior VP and management supervi sor. Ms. Johnson also comes to Carbon Healthcare from Adient. “ We can provide a more intimate type of approach, rather than being a large agency for a very small client,”Ms.Wood says.“Smaller clients can’t necessarily afford or access larger agencies. Often times they ask for morecustomizableapproaches to services than a marketing organization can provide to them.” The unit launches with major assignments from Gilead, Serono, and Wyeth. New CommonHealth Unit Focuses on HIGHSCIENCE BRANDS CarbonHealthcareCommunications provides smaller companies with the resources of a large agency. Nanske Wood and Cindy Johnson head up Carbon Healthcare Communications, CommonHealth’s new business unit. Knowing what keeps their clients up at night and providing the solutions is the trademark of success for Life SciencesConsulting,whichwas recently formed to meet theneeds of pharmaceutical andbiotechnology clients.Whether it’s the need for an improvedplanning process, developing a product commercialization framework,or meeting critical time lines for a product launch, a team of industryexperienced marketing specialists work to deliver the business results clients need.The company’s teamhasmore than 60+yearsof combined experience in pharmaceutical and con sumer marketing. With expertise in the areas of product manage ment,business planning,therapeutic/market analysis, and sales effectiveness, the core team of marketing specialists have experience in multiple therapeutic areas, including CV, HIV,CNS,and oncology. Life Sciences Consulting CREATESVALUE RESCENTRIS provides IT solutions Rescentris Ltd. has been launched to provide a variety of informationmanagement solutions for dataintensive lifesciences research and develop ment. The company was formed by former execu tives, scientists, and software developers from Lab Book Inc., including the architects of Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language (BSML) and the Lab Book software. Rescentris licensed all of LabBook’s products and technologies to expand its business built around BSML,bioinformatics, and knowledge management for lifesciences research. Rescentris also has assumed many key business relationships and client accounts initiated by LabBook. The company will continue development and distribution of LabBook software products and technologies such as the eLabBook electronic laboratory notebook and the BSML standard. Additionally, Rescentris has devel oped a strategy in response to recent changes in the marketplace for lifesciences IT systems. Company executives believe that bioinformatics and informationmanagement systems must be fully integrated into R&D information pipelines. At the same time, they believe the industry’s transition from paper to electronic record keeping requires capturing the science, not just the documents. The company’s business model entails working with its strategic partners to deliver complete infor mation solutions and services based in part on cus tomization of LabBook software components and semantic data models such as BSML, which help to unify internal, thirdparty, and public content in a common R&D information framework. Leading the team at Life Sciences Consulting are: Maria Lane and Diane Ray (front row) and Cheryl Umbles and Hedi Nesteruk (back row). 73 PharmaVOICE J un e 2 00 3 WHAT’S new Patient Video SHORTENS CLINICALTRIAL ENROLLMENTPROCESS Boardwalk Medical Video has introduced a product that could potentially shorten the time it takes a drug to go from a clinical study to the pharmacy shelf.The company is creating 20minute to 30minute video presen tations, which can be customized for sponsors and are designed exclusively for patients to ensure that every patient hears the details of a clinical study in exactly the same way.The video series is broken down into four parts: an introduction to the sponsor and its drug candidate; a detailed review of the protocol;information regarding informed consent; and a review of frequently asked questions. By providing investigators with this video,pharmaceutical companiescan retain morecontrol over their study and expedite the enrollment process. Boardwalk Medical Video was founded by Marvin Greenberg,M.D., an ophthalmologist with more than 15 years experience as a clinical investigator. In his own practice, Dr. Greenberg noted how timeconsuming the patientenrollment process could be and realized that there was a need for a product that would assist the patient and investigator without creating disruption in a busy medical practice. Columbia MedCom Group HELPS CLIENTS KEEP UPWITH CHANGES Columbia MedCom Group has been created through a reorganization of the board of directors and officers of Medicalliance Inc. Susan Torroella has been named CEO of the newly formed company while remaining president of Medicalliance,which has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Columbia MedCom Group. Medicalliance was formed in 1988 by nurse and former Glaxo rep Jill Rathburn and pharmacist Don Croce to offer medicalmarketing services to pharmaceutical manu facturers. Since that time, Medicalliance and its CME division, Medicalliance Education Institute (MEI), have provided strategic direction and tactical implementation of med ical communications programming. “Although the healthcare landscape frequently changes, the upheaval of the last year mayhave revolutionized our industry,”Ms.Torroella says.“Just keeping up with new guidances, guidelines, codes, and regulations — let alone proactively planning new marketing, promotional, sales, and educational activities — has overwhelmed man agers everywhere.The Columbia MedCom Group was formed to help clients find suit able, successful strategies and tactics that work comfortably within this environment.” Today, the ACCMEaccredited provider, Innovia Education Institute, is a wholly owned subsidiary and legally separate entity of Columbia MedCom Group. Innovia develops, manages, and accredits educational programs for physicians and other healthcare professionals that are supported by the pharmaceutical and medicaldevice industries and profes sional medical associations. Medicalliance, a separate legal entity of the Columbia MedCom Group, continues to develop professional communications programs and patient education programs for the pharmaceutical and device industries.Ser vices include strategic planning,advisory boards,consultant meetings, faculty training, and patient materials. Susan Torroella says Columbia MedCom helps clients find suitable, successful strategies and tactics that work within the changing healthcare environment. Sudler & Hennessey Acquires SALESFORCE TRAINING LEADER Sudler & Hennessey has expand ed its services through the acquisition of HealthAnswers Education, a lead ing developer of salestraining and medicaleducation programs for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. HealthAnswers Education, which was a unit of HealthAnswers Inc., is now a member of the S&H group of companies. HealthAnswers’ salestraining ser vices include the design, develop ment, and delivery of programs and services to build the skills and knowl edge of pharmaceutical/biotech com pan i e s ‘ s a l e s r e p re s e nt at i ve s . HealthAnswers also provides clients with customized sales representative sellingskills programs. The group provides pre and post launch training for sales representa tives, sales managers, and trainers through engag ing, interactive workshops, online distance learning, live and virtual preceptorships, and satellite confer encing. In addition, HealthAnswers develops and imple ments medicaleducation strategies. The group uses a proprietary product, HealthAnswers CE, which allows clients to offer online continuing edu cation and continuing medical education courses. The product allows for the results of each program to be tracked. Mark Samuel remains president of Health Answers.All other HealthAnswers Education Division management and staff continue to service their cur rent client base. The Sudler & Hennessey network offers Health Answers access to a broad range of additional resources, and we’re looking forward to using those resources to enhance our programs and enhance the success of our clients’ brands, says Mark Samuel. Omnicare Clinical Research has established a separate business unit for the conduct of periapproval pharmaceutical studies to include geriatric clinical trials. Periapproval research includes all clinical studies conducted after filing a new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or a similar filing with regulatory agencies outside the United States. “The challenging environment in the pharmaceutical industry is prompting drug companies to emphasize an expanded use of marketed products through new indications with more aggressive spending on commercial products,” says Joel Gemunder,president andCEO of Omnicare.“At the same time,regulatory and public pressures continue to rise around the need to conduct more extensive clinical trials targeting the elderly population. These two dynamics build on the strengths of both Omnicare and Omnicare Clinical Research.” Omnicare Clinical Research has access to a geriatric recruitment base exceed ing 950,000 residents of longterm care and assistedliving facilities in 47 states through its parent company.This access can accelerate study startup and efficient monitoring of these patient populations. The unit is under the direction of Dr.Dale Evans,newly appointed president of PeriApproval and Geriatric Clinical Studies. The unit also provides services to pharmaceutical clients in support of geriatric research initiatives. According to recent studies, drugs have been insufficiently characterized in the geriatric population. In addition, while geriatric patients rep resent about 50% of national drug consumption, representation in clinical research has, in many cases, averaged about 10% to 20%,depending on the drug indication. Omnicare Establishes PERIAPPROVAL ANDGERIATRIC SERVICES RESEARCH UNIT 74 J un e 20 03 PharmaVOICE PhRMA Adopts Program to REPORT COUNTERFEIT DRUGS The Pharmaceutical Research andManufacturers of America (PhRMA) has adopted a program to report counterfeit drugs to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Under the voluntary program, PhRMA member companies agree to notify the FDA’s Office of Crimi nal Investigations within five working days of deter mining that there is a reasonable basis to believe that a product has been counterfeited.The program also applies to counterfeit drugs discovered in for eign countries if there is clear evidence that the counterfeits are intended for distribution in the Unit ed States. “This program reaffirms our member companies’ commitment to the highest standards of drug qual ity and patient safety,” says Alan F. Holmer, president of PhRMA. “The information provided by PhRMA members under this program will assist FDA in car rying out its responsibilities to protect the safety and integrity of the nation’s drug supply by quickly and effectively removing counterfeit drugs from the marketplace.” PharmAnalysis Group Inc. was launched by for mer Epinomics Research Inc. partners Diane L. Simi son and Laurie G. Hughes.The company specializes in strategic reimbursement, access strategies, and programs for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The new company retains the entire strategic reimbursement, case management, and communi cations staff of Epinomics Research. PharmAnalysis Group can assist pharmaceutical, biological, and medicaldevice manufacturers with reimbursement research,strategic planning, design and implementation of launch programs, and post launch provider support programs. The PharmAnalysis Group includes nationally known specialists in reimbursement, coding, field reimbursement support, managed care, Medicare, and Medicaid. Services to be offered by PharmAnalysis Group include:reimbursement and economic assessments; qualitative pricing and reimbursement research; healthpolicy research and multiclient studies;strate gic planning and market analysis; coding analysis and strategy; payer market research; provider sup port and casemanagement services; product launch services; and productdistribution research. The company also offers marketing support, com munications, and program development as well as hotlinepatient assistance and foundation design and management. “Our staff includes some of the country’s finest reimbursement and economic strategists nation wide; therefore, we are key players in this market,” says Ms. Simison,president of PharmAnalysis Group. “Our intent is to help clients with their pre to post launch needs.Our team knows what it means to be held accountable for results. We are committed to providing the highest quality independent advice and assisting in the execution of salessupport pro grams.” WHAT’S new BOARDWALKMEDICALVIDEO,Tamarac, Fla., was founded by Marvin Greenberg, M.D., an ophthalmologist with more than 15 years experience as a clinical investigator.For more information, contact Dr. Greenberg at 9547262080. CARBONHEALTHCARE COMMUNICATIONS,Wayne,N.J., is a division of CommonHealth,a leading healthcarecommunications resource and a WPPGroup company.For more information, visit commonhealth.com. COLUMBIA MEDCOMGROUP,Columbia, Md., consists of Innovia Education Institute, which develops, manages,and accredits educational programs for physicians and other healthcare professionals that are supported by the pharmaceutical and medicaldevice industries and professional medical associations, and Medicalliance, which offers medicalmarketing services to Follow up which are devoted to inventing medicines that allow patients to live longer,healthier, and more productive lives.For more information,visit phrma.org. PHARMANALYSISGROUP INC.,Alexandria, Va., assists pharmaceutical,biological,and medicaldevice manufacturers with reimbursement research,strategic planning, design and implementation of launch programs,and postlaunch providersupport programs.For more information,visit pharmanalysisgroup.com. RESCENTRISLTD.,Columbus,Ohio, provides informationmanagement solutions to enhance lifesciences research and development through its products, software components,and data models by unifying bioinformatics,e ectronic lab notebook systems,and knowledge management.For more information,visit rescentris.com. Newly Formed PharmAnalysis Group SPECIALIZES IN ACCESS ISSUES Former Epinomics Research Inc. partners Diane L. Simison and Laurie G. Hughes have launched PharmAnalysis Group. pharmaceutical manufacturers. For more information, visit columbiamedcomgroup.com. HEALTHANSWERSEDUCATION,a division of Sudler & Hennessey,New York,develops sales training and medicaleducation programs for pharmaceutical and biotech clients. For more information, visit sudler.com. LIFESCIENCESCONSULTING,Lancaster,Pa., provides product management,business planning, therapeuticmarket analysis, and sales effectiveness in multiple therapeutic areas, including CV,HIV,CNS,and oncology.For more information,visit lifesciencesconsulting.com. OMNICARE,Covington,Ky.,a provider of pharmaceutical care for the elderly, provides clinicalresearch services in 29 countries.For more information,visit omnicare.com. THEPHARMACEUTICAL RESEARCHAND MANUFACTURERSOF AMERICA,Washington, D.C., represents the country’s leading research based pharmaceutical and biotech companies,