Life Science Connect Blog

  1. What Pharma Is Learning From The Retail Industry: Gamification 2/19/2015

    Pharma has also begun to accept the possibilities gamification could hold for bolstering relationships with patients. We’ve seen the popularity of activity trackers, such as FitBit, that track a person’s exercise, caloric intake, and other data. Some fitness apps even give you virtual trophies or rank your performance against your friends to create a healthy sense of competition. But Big Pharma has been taking a stab at gamification for drug development and clinical trials as well.

  2. What Pharma Is Learning From Retail: It's All About The App 2/11/2015

    We are connected at the hip to our cell phones, so it makes sense the pharma industry is setting its sights on the phone to engage and educate patients in its overarching quest for patient centricity.

  3. What Pharma Is Learning From Retail: Data, Engagement Go Hand-In-Hand 2/6/2015

    Just as the retail industry grows increasingly customer-centric, the pharma industry is undergoing its own revolution to become patient-centric. While in the retail space, customers have become more willing to share personal information with stores to see more benefits/deals, patients, too, are showing their willingness to voice their needs and dedicate their data to studies in order to see greater medical benefit in the long-run.

  4. Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative: The Key To A Patient-Centric Industry? 1/27/2015

    Last week’s State of the Union speech made headlines as Obama announced his Precision Medicine Initiative — a new endeavor to bring personalized medicine to the forefront.

  5. New Antibiotic Could Fight Resistance, And Other Recent Pharma News 1/16/2015

    This week in pharma news, a new antibiotic could be the answer to a global health crisis; changes in Indian packaging regulations could lower consumer risk; and a major merger could be good news for the future development of rare disease treatments.

  6. “Hyper-Innovation” In Pharma: FDA Approvals Are Just The Start 1/14/2015

    It’s clear, after 2014's surge in FDA approvals, that the industry has increased its productivity. Pharma is slowly clawing its way out of what Forbes has labeled the “painful trough” of 2005-2010. But what do these recent approvals tell us about where we are headed — or where we need to be headed — as an industry?

  7. How Bill Gates Is “Drawing” Pharma Into The Future 1/14/2015

    Over the past year, there has been an explosion of debate about the necessity of being vaccinated for illnesses that had been eradicated or have seen lower death rates. I’m not going to enter this argument; rather, I’m more intrigued by a project that has been put forth to celebrate the progress made in global health care with vaccines

  8. “Pharmaficial” Intelligence: Could Science Fiction Become A Pharma Reality? 1/14/2015

    All the buzz about wearable technology and the convergence of Google and pharma this past year has made me think about where technology is carrying our industry.

  9. Will BRICS Have Answers To The HIV Vaccine Search? 1/7/2015

    At the beginning of December, Russia announced it was pushing not just one, but three new HIV vaccines into clinical trials. But Russia is not the only country searching for a successful HIV vaccine as we venture into 2015.