New Electronic and Web-based Applications, Sites, and Technologies
Featured Briefs: Lathian Health Offers Closed-Loop Promotion Tool Informa Launches CRM/ROI Tracking Solution Verticals onDemand Offers Analytics and Reporting Solution OpenQ Unveils KOL Solutions Tibco Spotfire Solution Speeds Drug Discovery for Chemists DecisionView and OpSource Partner for Clinical-Trial Enrollment Tool Follow up DecisionView Inc. provides software solutions to improve time to market and reduce clinical-trial costs for life-sciences companies. For more information, visit decisionview.com. Informa Medical Publishing, a division of Informa Healthcare, produces a range of clinical medicine books and journals. For more information, visit informahealthcare.com. Lathian Health offers a suite of e-promotion services and solutions that support personal and nonpersonal promotion to physicians and healthcare providers. For more information, visit lathian.com. OpenQ provides medical solutions and information services for pharmaceutical and medical device companies. For more information, visit openq.com. OpSource delivers software-as-a-service and Web applications for on-demand companies. For more information, visit opsource.net. Tibco Software Inc. provides enterprise analytics software for next-generation business intelligence. For more information, visit spotfire.tibco.com. Verticals onDemand Inc. provides software-as-a-service customer relationship management applications to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. For more information, visit verticalsondemand.com. Lathian Health’s latest tool, Lathian Closed Loop Promotion (CLP), is designed to deliver trackable, customizable marketing programs that offer physicians the flexibility to both receive and request information at their convenience. Rather than mass-producing detail pieces, leaving them behind for the physician, and then having to conduct costly research on the success of a marketing program, Lathian’s Closed Loop Promotion tool allows for promotional materials tailored to a physician’s specific needs, patient population, and specialty to be packaged on a trackable DVD or CD-ROM. These materials are bundled with proprietary software that allows a physician to access up-to-date pharmaceutical and medical information outside normal office hours and to request educational information or drug samples. “The relationship between physicians and sales reps is continuously evolving," says Lathian Health President Quang Pham. “Every sales interaction has to be meaningful, ensuring that the sales rep is giving the most appropriate, effective information, while also keeping the physician’s valuable time in mind." Every dollar spent on pharmaceutical sales and marketing today must show clear ROI: the right information has to reach the right group of healthcare professionals to effectively influence prescribing behavior, says Lathian Health’s Quang Pham. Informa Launches CRM/ROI Tracking Solution Informa Medical Publishing has launched e-MedInform, an interactive electronic delivery platform of clinical medicine books, journals, and educational content designed to provide busy physicians with easier access to cutting-edge medical knowledge. The product helps pharmaceutical brand managers provide physicians with information on the latest research, diagnosis, and treatment methods in medicine. The system works by creating quick educational learning modules for sponsorship by pharmaceutical companies looking to provide clinical information to physicians worldwide. A single knowledge center can contain a library of clinical medicine books, journals, or customized content hand-selected by the brand manager to support a product’s educational and promotional initiatives. Access to the knowledge center is provided free of charge via the Internet to the pharma company’s list of physician contacts. “The main advantage of e-MedInform is that it allows brand managers to accurately calculate the ROI of any campaign they run through their library," says Tamaryn Hankinson, director for the new initiative. “The library captures users’ contact details, provides detailed history on their reading preferences, and therefore informs marketers about how to tailor future campaigns for improved ROI in the future." The depth of information available in such a user-friendly format makes e-MedInform appealing to busy physicians, says Informa’s Tamaryn Hankinson. Verticals onDemand’s recently launched VInsights solution is a no-maintenance software-as-a-service (SaaS) data warehouse application that supports the analytics and reporting needs of VBioPharma CRM customers. VInsights houses an unlimited amount of prescription, sales, and call activity data and provides detailed reports accessible from anywhere by field management, end users, and the home office. Drop-down menus enable slicing and dicing of information through multiple levels of the hierarchy, multiple markets/payers, and data types. The new product also delivers prebuilt reports that can be added to any VBioPharma dashboard. In addition, VInsights requires no support from a database administrator and no infrastructure purchases. VInsights is also available to remote VMobile users at no additional cost. Verticals onDemand’s recently launched VInsights solution is a no-maintenance software-as-a-service (SaaS) data warehouse application that supports the analytics and reporting needs of VBioPharma CRM customers. OpenQ has unveiled two new additions to its openX platform: openPresenter, for managing distribution of proprietary clinical and marketing content; and openID, for identifying key opinion leaders (KOLs) for advisory boards or speaker programs. OpenPresenter allows pharmaceutical and medical device companies to manage and distribute their content, both internally and for outside speakers and key opinion leaders (KOLs), while enforcing compliance. The module uses an architecture that emphasizes speed, anywhere access, and desktop-like ease of use. OpenID enables the real-time identification of KOLs, investigators, rising stars, and centers of excellence. OpenID leverages more than a half-billion information records compiled and normalized from dozens of data sources, which can be queried in real time to identify candidates for advisory boards, trials, or speaker programs. “For companies that are feeling the burden of their market research bills, openID will be a welcome relief," says Jim Zuffoletti, openQ president and cofounder. “OpenID represents a breakthrough technology that enables customers to search structured and unstructured information to find the most influential, most prolific, or highest-impact physicians and researchers." OpenQ has unveiled two new additions to its openX platform. Tibco Software has released Tibco Spotfire Lead Discovery, a solution that provides access to chemistry and biological data in a single-analysis environment, then builds best-practice applications for chemical structure analysis. The solution integrates with cheminformatics software, including Symyx and CambridgeSoft. Users can analyze data by library, structure activity relationship, selectivity, or compound series. Chemists can use the tool to visualize and explore relationships between chemistry and biological data, as well as other relevant information, from a single application. Medicinal and computational chemists can investigate and drive structural recommendations more quickly, improving the process for choosing synthesis paths for effective drug design. “Lead Discovery enhances chemists’ intuition and expertise in deciphering complex problems, enabling them to work more flexibly with the disparate technologies and data sources used in analysis today," says Christian Marcazzo, senior director, industry solutions life sciences, for Spotfire. This solution helps chemists focus on making fast, well-informed decisions by investigating all of the relevant data in a single, interactive environment that speeds insights, says Christian Marcazzo of Tibco Spotfire. DecisionView has unveiled DV OnDemand, a suite of application hosting and managed services for StudyOptimizer, the company’s flagship solution for optimizing the clinical-trial recruitment and enrollment process. The solution combines StudyOptimizer’s predictive analytics capabilities with OpSource’s on-demand Web operations and strategic hosting solution to meet the stringent security and availability requirements of its customers. “DV OnDemand ensures that the software runs on a highly scalable, secure, and available infrastructure, effectively relieving the challenges associated with maintaining software applications on the premises," says DecisionView CEO Steve Andrade. We realized the growing need to offer multiple options in providing a seamless and convenient experience for our customers and their IT departments, says DecisionView’s Steve Andrade. E-Upgrades and Enhancements n Supply-chain and logistics software solutions provider ClearOrbit has launched a Web resource, ClearOrbit Community, that provides customers with a venue in which to share industry knowledge and exchange ideas to understand and solve supply-chain challenges, as well as drive innovation and shape future product direction. The site has four sections: the Idea Exchange, the Forum, the Resource Center, and the Support Center. For more information, visit community.clearorbit.com. n InVentiv Health’s new Website (inventivhealth.com), designed by the company’s interactive agency Blue Diesel, reflects its integrated offerings and ability to build broader-scale solutions for clients. The updated version includes a structure that enables visitors to search for information by services, division, or keyword. Among the new features is a tool that provides visitors with suggestions of services that may be of interest to them based on information about their job, the type of healthcare products with which they work, and the life-cycle phase of their products. For more information, visit inventivhealth.com. n Octagon Research Solutions has released StartingPoint 3.2, the latest version of its global document authoring template suite for electronic submissions. Some of the enhancements offered by the new version include a global configuration file for document information fields, enhanced physician’s labeling rule functionality, new templates to support ANDA submissions, and an option to number tables and figures either by document or by section. For more information, visit octagonresearch.com. n Symyx Technologies has introduced Symyx Registration 1.5, the latest version of its chemical data management tool. Symyx Registration 1.5 supersedes and replaces ISIS- based Symyx ChemBio AE software, supporting ISIS-to-Isentris migrations while enabling scientists to register chemical compounds, view biological data, and compare chemical and biological data side-by-side entirely in the Isentris environment. For more information, visit symyx.com.