Planning for Productivity

By Bio-IT World Staff 

 

September 18, 2013 | Productivity doesn’t simply happen, especially in drug discovery. Forecasting and planning drug development can be a painstaking process, but carefully managing resources and thoughtfully measuring progress can open a world of opportunity for progress and savings. 

 

Cambridge Healthtech Institute is hosting the 11th annual Strategic Resource Management event along with its 8th annual Portfolio Management event. Speakers from across the drug discovery landscape will share best practices on resource management, decision-making, forecasting, and more. 

 

Here are a few of the talks we’re looking forward to. 

 

Anastasia Christianson, Ph.D., Senior Director, R&D Information, AstraZeneca, will speak on factors that influence portfolio decisions. We often only have a fraction of the information we’d like to have before making portfolio decisions. What is the minimum information needed to support good portfolio decisions? Is the same level of information available for compounds developed in-house compared to in-licensed compounds? Monday, October 21, 12:15 

 

Hartmut Hein, Ph.D., Director, Head of Global Planning Office, Merck Serono, will present a case study for strategic resource management during a major restructuring program. At the end of 2011, Merck Serono initiated a big restructuring program in the context of the "Fit for 2018" initiative. As a result, the headquarters in Geneva was closed and significant changes were made to the operating model for Merck Serono. Tuesday, October 22, 9:00 

 

John Ansell, Senior Partner, TranScrip; Author: "Transforming Big Pharma – Assessing the Strategic Alternatives", will discuss underforecasting. Why do some forecasting methodologies still in use grossly underestimate eventual sales of successful products? The mistake isn’t benign. Underestimation can lead to failure to adequately promote products that appear to be too small; post-launch, jumping too quickly to negative conclusions; cancelling or not taking up perfectly viable products that are potential blockbusters. Monday, October 21, 2:00 

 

Boehringer Ingelheim evaluated 200 diseases to identify those that offered the greatest promise for new drug discovery programs. Jan Poth, Ph.D., Vice President, Marketing Pipeline Products, will explain the criteria used including size of the target population in key geographies, level and nature of unmet medical needs, scientific and regulatory hurdles to develop a new therapy, and level of clinical innovation and revenue potential of aspirational profiles. Joint Keynote Session with Portfolio Management; Tuesday, October 22, 2:30