Author: Christian Velten

2015 has been a good year!

It might not appear as such on the first view. And unfortunately there are always enough “devaluators” who are first and foremost fixated on crises and conflicts.

But a lot of positive and good things happened in 2015 which are worth to look back on. In the German newspaper DIE ZEIT (#52, 23.12.2015) Hannes Soltau, Merlind Theile and Doreen Borsutzki published a remarkable collection of facts.

Dec 2014 – Dec 2018 / ACTELION PHARMACEUTICALS Responsible for developing an ultra-rare neurodegenerative disease area by collaborating with KOLs and PAGs on innovative clinical projects (IISs), digital clinical support tools, impactful scientific communication/education, and disease awareness campaigns. Achievements Biomarker & Genetic Testing Program identified >200 patients with an ultra-rare disease Achievements Pharma Science August 7, 2018 Medical education program on MF-CTCL disease released Achievements Pharma Science May 8, 2017 SAMS clinical digital solution has arrived Achievements Digital Pharma Science June 12, 2016 Browse CV Full CV Timeline

Pharmaceutical companies have an inevitable need for regular if not permanent analysis of literature published on their products. They are not only legally obligated with regards to pharmacovigilance (e.g. processing of any undesirable drug effect reported somewhere) and medical information (e.g. answering product inquires by practitioners and pharmacists). Beyond that, product reports within the scientific literature are a full treasure of real-world product behavior findings which support marketing, competitor intelligence, product innovation, and more. But we are talking about giant pool of millions of publications within thousands of scientific journals which is growing every single day. Ad-hoc searching and analyzing…

Information research on freedom-to-operate is daily business patent research. But it should never be undervalued. Every single project somehow is a class of its own. And missing the tiniest piece of “public” information can have major impact on the success of your IP strategy. So, standard guides and how-to’s do not really serve the need for distinct research strategy and brain power. But 10 basic rules might help to be more effective and successful … As a it could be of special interest, I added some tips to reduce your costs with FTO research at the end of this post. Step 1 -…

Since the late 1960’s up to the end of 2013, eNova was the Corporate Product Literature Database of Novartis and its ancestors. But in fact it was much more than that. Over many years of continuous improvements, eNova had evolved to the most sophisticated, mature and powerful information source on real-world product behavior. Providing an outstanding high level of “digestion” of source data, eNova was able to answer very specific questions regarding clinical findings and medical evidences on Novartis products 24/7 and within just a few minutes … where alternative methods needed hours to days. During my time at Novartis, I was responsible for the…

In 2013, I initiated and promoted the development and implementation of “eNova QuickAnswers”, a quick and easy access to standard product-related answers for marketing and medical information colleagues at Novartis. “QuickAnswers” was finally realized as search tool within eNova and as website widget which could be implemented on any intranet or Sharepoint site Last not least the team decided to additionally develop a QuickAnswers iOS app for internal use. I supported the team with migrating the QuickAnswers concept and functionality to the principles of an app. The result successfully passed user acceptance tests, Novartis risk assessment, and was rolled-out to the internal…

Wisdom out of life for (working) life:  unknown author, translation from German

I so far met basically three archetypes of human characters within – esp. larger – companies: Builders, Maintainers and Destroyers. Builders Building is their passion. They are restless. The status quo never is good enough. After the implementation is before the implementation. Builders are thinking forward, innovatively and constructively. They see changes as tools for improvement and development. But they set a high value on a well-founded and provable rational for any changes needed as part of their overall plan. Builders know that for being successful they have to convince others (like Maintainers) and bring them in. They are usually quite…

Do you know that experience? You are reading the latest “Harvard Business Review” (HBR), and sooner or later you are reached by a melancholic mood. Because you simply realize that – regarding recent management methods – there seems to be such a huge gap between aspiration and everyday reality. On the one hand you are reading in HBR how things should be, or at least could be … and in real-life you have to stand the complete opposite. This can really get you down. So, a warning notice on HBR saying something like “Reading this journal may cause depression” could really be…

The peer-review principle for scientific publications is a well established and sound approach to ensure publication quality … in theory. In real life it is regularly found to be leaky. This is a current example, reported by Retraction Watch