Not surprisingly, going mobile was a big focus of the conference. With 500 million estimated to be using mobile health applications by 2015, as Mr. Allen noted, it is hard to ignore the impact of “mHealth” – defined as the practice of medicine and public health, supported by mobile devices.

Mr. Allen described the “Cycle of Doom,” which is essentially broken down as such: The increasing cost of healthcare leads to a high rate of uninsured, which leads to payers tightening prices, which limits research funding, which hinders the pharma industry’s growth – all of which results in a cycle.  Mr. Allen believes mHealth can help alleviate that cycle.

How? The users of mobile apps and those who are uninsured share similar demographics and are more likely to conduct research and obtain information from their smartphones. Developing mobile tools for disease management and medication adherence, for example, provides opportunity to impact healthcare costs. The idea is that these smartphone users who cannot see a physician will be able to access important information regarding their health via their devices.

“You don’t have to think big; the small things can go a long way” for a brand, he says.

Mr. Allen caught up with us after the event, when we had a chance to conduct a video interview for more of his thoughts on mHealth. That video, along with other interviews we conducted at Digital Pharma East, are now available on our new YouTube channel.

Ms. Johnson’s story is the subject of “Creating a New Normal: A Day in the Life of a Person With Chronic Illness,” a feature on the newly launched ConvergentTimes.com site. The Website features articles, podcasts, and tutorials on a variety of topics, including iPad selling strategies, healthcare applications, online social etiquette for healthcare brands, the use of new media, and the role of effective payer and access strategies.

Created by The CementBloc, a multichannel health and wellness creative agency based in New York, the Website is first online forum for emerging innovations in health and wellness marketing communications.

The story with Ms. Johnson illustrates her situation and then offers insight for using digital innovations and media to enhance the use and impact of assessment surveys for patients with the condition based on anatomy, intensity, and daily living. Staff from The CementBloc also included an infographic to go along with the story.

“Mary is just one patient who finds ways to live with her disease. But bear in mind that there are millions of people like Mary dealing with chronic illness—there are lots of ‘new normals’ out there,” states the website. “And, thanks to the creative application of new media and technology, new normals are very much a part of the health and wellness landscape as well.”

Elizabeth Elfenbein, a partner at The CementBloc, says ConvergentTimes.com is an opportunity for professionals in the industry to check out what some of the brightest minds are saying about marketing in the health and wellness space. “We welcome comments and, even better, our peers’ own ideas about how convergent thinking can drive results,” she says.

The personal videos from employees in Publicis Healthcare Communications Group’s global offices are among the innovative features PHCG built into its new website, which launched in October after nine months of design. The website was designed by Williams-Labadie, part of the PHCG group.

When a visitor logs onto PHCG’s new website (www.publicishealthcare.com), he or she is immediately greeted with a stream of real-time, continually updated stats, including the number of people around the world living with heart disease and diabetes.

The new website design is meant to give a better view of PHCG’s identity, one that shows the company is connected to the healthcare world. The stats about the number diabetes and heart disease patients are not random. Rather, says Rosemary Abendroth, senior VP and global communications director at PHCG, they demonstrate the group’s involvement in cardiovascular and diabetes areas for its clients.

“There are also very, very quite a few people who are touched by these diseases, and our pharma clients are leading in terms of finding treatments for those diseases,” Ms. Abendroth says.

Below the stats, one can click a map for information about the group’s international locations, including pictures and descriptions of each location, or click over to the showcase that streams video, interactive pieces, and print images of the group’s work.

“The main objective of the website is really to give the breadth and depth of the Publicis Healthcare Communications Group network ­– that we’re a series of agencies who don’t just do advertising,” says Ms. Abendroth.  “We really are A-Z, everything that a pharma company needs in the healthcare communications area.” That includes branding, digital, medical communications, and message delivery.

Ms. Abendroth says PHCG offers a service that is very differs from its competitors in the way its network pulls everything together. “We wanted to do it simply, and we wanted to make it rather intuitive,” she says. “We are a dynamic, modern organization. We wanted to show warmth, we wanted to show people – not only people who are touched by these diseases on our landing pages, but also the type of people who work here.”

In fact, PHCG leaders view the careers section as the most charming element of the site. They asked employees from offices around the globe to film their own videos so that the short, personable features were “organic.” While the main audience of the website will be clients and potential clients, PHCG leaders also hope to attract new talent, who can visit the website and read employees’ biographies, read about what they do, and understand the group’s capabilities.

“If you go to the jobs site, there are dozens of jobs all over the world, and we really want to entice people,” Ms. Abendroth says. “We want people to understand who we are if they’re applying for the job. Before, they really couldn’t find that much about PHCG, and now they can.”

PHCG executives are also proud of the showcase section, which enables the group to share real examples of its work, including work done in China, France, and Italy.

“The whole site is dedicated to celebrating what we do,” Ms. Abendroth says, adding that it is also homage to the industry.

“That’s crazy,” says Mr. Bough. “You’re going to see more and more companies move to put digital efforts forth. Now, it’s a world of two-way engagement; it’s a world of consumer engagement overall.”

After all, how does a company expect to reach out to consumers when it doesn’t even have technology that is compatible for their use? Despite being the most heavily regulated industry, pharmaceuticals are not exempt from the need to change their current advertising and marketing practices, which includes improving their digital efforts. Gone are the days where television advertisements or ads in print publications will suffice.

“One of the biggest lessons that can be learned from other industries is you have to go where your consumer is, and you have to change your business model to match that,” says Mr. Bough. “We are rapidly becoming a 100 percent digital society.”

In fact, pharmaceutical companies, many of which have only viewed digital communication as an “add-on” and not as central to their marketing and advertising campaigns, are going to have to redefine their efforts if they do not want to be left behind. At least that is what the members of Pozen’s Digital Advisory Board discussed during a roundtable discussion with the media on September 16.

Pozen established the Digital Advisory Board to help progress the company’s vision for revolutionizing its traditional pharmaceutical commercial model as it plans to launch its new products. The new model will be at core of the company’s efforts, and consumer engagement, Pozen’s DAB members agree, is of utmost importance.

Meredith Ressi, president at Manhattan Research and another member of the advisory board, noted that there have been 25 percent fewer drug launches over the past decade. In addition, she says, physicians are now crunched for time, and they can no longer fit meetings with sales representatives into their busy days.

Reaching consumers in the platforms they use, abandoning the one-way messaging model to patients, and instead, moving from a patient-centric model to more of a consumer-centric model – one that also views physicians as consumers – will be crucial.

“It’s about jumping in and really listening to what consumers are saying,” says Raj Amin, CEO and co-founder, HealthiNation, who is also a member of the board.

According to Mark Monseau, the founder and principal at MDM Communications, and former director of corporate communication, social media at Johnson & Johnson, the digital landscape is enabling individuals, whether patients or physicians, to redefine relationships: they are able to self-publish and connect with like-minded individuals. They are also becoming more empowered to make their own decisions. Unfortunately, the traditional pharma model is not consumer-centric, but rather very formal.

That is why a cultural shift within the companies is needed, says Dr. Dan Palestrant, M.D., CEO and founder of Sermo, and another member of Pozen’s DAB. At the end of the day, the biggest hurdle for companies, he says, may not be to determine the appropriate platform – rather, it’s being able to decide the right resources internally. This may require reallocating resources away from existing strategies and dedicating them to one that focuses on a core digital program.

Ineffective organizations, Mr. Bough says, are those that look at digital marking as an “add-on” to traditional strategies. The key, adds Mr. Amin, is to develop a holistic strategy to focus on creating a relationship between the physician groups and the consumer groups.

Dr. Palestrant says pharmaceutical companies also need to realize that controlling the message, including the conversation taking place between the physician and consumer, is no longer possible. Pharmaceuticals need to find ways to become a part of that conversation. He says he was approached by a person he calls an “e-patient advocate.” The woman, who maintained a blog about diabetes, had more than 20,000 people reading her posts each week. Despite the fact that she had this level of readership, the industry was not involved, Dr. Palestrant says.

“Her concern was there is a lot of information that is incorrect or lacking detail, and people were crying out for accurate information in a timely way presented in a format” that they could access, Dr. Palestrant says. “The way to go about doing that is to start figuring out ways to understand that ecosystem and have the structures in place to be able to inject yourself in an appropriate way in the manner in which people are looking for it.”

What’s worse is this: “It will become negligible for companies not to listen to what’s being said in the digital space,” Mr. Bough adds.

Recent efforts by pharmaceutical companies to move into the digital world need improvement, primarily in the realm of building communities. Dr. Palestrant says product portals set up by these companies have been a “100 percent failure. I have yet to see one that actually succeeds.” Rather, if a physician wants to find information, the place he or she is one that is run by the pharmaceutical company.

Ms. Ressi says that while physicians do visit product websites, there will need to be a more distributed model. Companies will need to ask, “How do you be where physicians are?”

Other questions companies can ask: How are they changing their organizations? How are they changing their strategic plans? Is the agency record still focused on traditional approaches only?

“The message is critical in this environment,” Mr. Amin says. Providing real-time information back to consumers when they need it and in the platform by which they can access it is the way to go.

Pozen plans to share the company’s plans for the digital model with other pharmaceutical companies as the company moves forward.

Stay tuned for links to recorded tidbits from the roundtable discussion.

That they are digitally connected represents a variety of opportunities for stakeholders, including payers, pharma and med tech companies, and others, to reach physicians and their patients more effectively.

The study, conducted by QuantiaMD (a physician community) and CareContinuum Alliance, found that nearly 90 percent of physicians use at least one social media site for personal use, while 67 percent use one for professional purposes. For the study – which included 4,033 clinicians and was conducted in August 2011 on QuantiaMD – researchers used a definition of social media that not only included social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, but also professional and patient networking communities specific to the medical field, blogs, and other sites like YouTube.

When it comes to personal use, 61 percent said they used Facebook, while 31 percent said they used YouTube – the two highest uses. Professionally, 28 percent of physicians said they used physician communities, while 19 percent said they used LinkedIn. More than 20 percent of participating physicians said they used two or more social media sites for both personal and professional uses.

“Physicians are people first, and they go to Facebook first for the same reason everybody else does,” which includes sharing photos, connecting with friends and family, and for other personal uses, explains Mary Modahl, chief communications officer at QuantiaMD and an author of the report. When it comes to professional use, however, “physicians were far more interested in going to physicians-only spaces where they know there were other clinicians in an professional environment.”

The results of the study lend more weight to the ensuing debate over the use of social media in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

“The growth in social media really indicates that we’re approaching a tipping point where people are seeing real value in interconnecting with other people,” Ms. Modahl says. “When you go to areas like CareContinuum, very much of the discussion is how the behavior of one individual can enhance the behavior of another. We’re all influenced by our friends and family members and what they think. Pharma and med tech are not exceptions.”

For the most part, though, “physicians are using these sites for a range of professional purposes, but educational objectives dominate at present,” the report states. One physician in the study specified looking for new developments in medicine and using social media to read new articles and listen to experts.

Physicians also said they had used these sites to communicate with colleagues to consult on patient issues discuss professional challenges, or keep in touch. Much more rarely, however, did they use social media to directly communicate with patients. One-third of physicians in the study say they have had a patient try to “friend” them on Facebook. Three-quarters of these physicians say they declined or ignored the invitations, but the remaining said they accepted. Many expressed legal concerns over patient privacy laws and physician liability.

Most physicians in the study were not well-acquainted with online patient communities, with only 11 percent saying they were familiar with one or more of them. However, Ms. Modahl says what is intriguing is that two-thirds of those who were familiar said they had a positive impact on patients. Meanwhile, 40 percent of physicians who were familiar with the online patient communities say they already recommend these sites to their own patients, and another 40 percent say they would consider recommending them in the future.

“About half of physicians say they would be comfortable with serving as a source of professional advice for an online patient community or engage anonymously to better understand these communities,” the report states.

Between 60 to 80 percent of physicians see the potential for a wide range of physician-patient online interactions. The study notes that when asked about the benefits of online interactions with patients, clinicians most often cited improved access to care, supported by more – and more convenient – communication.

The physicians who are acquainted with online communities for patient communities “really think it’s great,” notes Ms. Modahl, pointing out that many physicians found these patient communities to be especially beneficial to patients with chronic illness, cancer, and rare diseases. “The ones who do know about it are quite likely to recommend it.”

Physicians were cautious, though, warning that the patient community sites lacked a way to ensure information is correct and applies to an individual, while others feared the online communities become a forum for complaints, inaccurate information, and blaming.

On the other hand, a higher percentage of the participants said they use online physician communities, as 28 percent reported using them for professional uses, and many have an interest in using them to learn from peers and experts, discuss clinical issues, and share practice management challenges.

How is this data beneficial to other healthcare professionals? The report issued by QuandiaMD suggests that payers and care management organizations may want to consider supporting or actively promoting certain online patient communities, not only to their members, but physicians in their networks.

“They might even work with such sites to address physician concerns around accuracy of information and provide resources that help sites validate information and maintain balance views through clinician participation,” the report states.

In addition, the vast majority of clinicians say they would like to “prescribe” good patient education materials. Payers could work through the physician communities to provide them with resources and provide related physician education.

Pharma and med tech companies, the report suggests, should also leverage online physician communities as a new way of reaching rapidly growing numbers of clinicians.

“Such sites provide ample opportunities to educate customers about their products, and to provide physicians with patient education materials and others tools – perhaps even finding ways to collaborate on things such as adherence solutions,” the report states.

However, the report did acknowledge the need for regulatory clarity for the use of social media within the industry. This is especially important, as Ms. Modahl says she expects the number of connected physicians to grow in the future as the younger generation of physicians who grew up using social media tools, including Facebook, enters the industry.

Pozen has formed an unprecedented Digital Advisory Board (DAB) to identify untapped digital strategies as it prepares to commercialize its pipeline.  In doing so, Pozen officials are hoping they can set a new trend that will change the way pharma companies market their products.

Pozen has assembled what the company calls an “esteemed group of digital thought-leaders to help progress the company’s vision for revolutionizing the traditional pharmaceutical commercial model.” In doing so, the company’s new DAB will host a roundtable discussion from 11 a.m. to noon on Friday, September 16.

Not only will Pozen’s newly formed DAB focus on digital strategy, but the board will draw from experts outside of the pharma industry. Members of the board include:

• Raj Amin, chief executive officer and co-founder, HealthiNation; previously vice president of business development, N2 Broadband
• John Bax, chief financial officer, LivingSocial; previously chief financial officer, RecycleBank and Walmart.com
• Bonin Bough, director of digital and social media, PepsiCo; previously director of Global Interactive, Social and Emerging Media Practice, Weber Shandwick
• Marc Monseau, founder and principal, MDM Communication, LLC; previously director of corporate communication and social media, Johnson & Johnson
• Daniel Palestrant, M.D., chief executive officer and founder, Sermo; previously founder of Azygos, Inc.

“The pharmaceutical industry has only begun to scratch the surface of employing digitally-based commercialization approaches,” says Liz Cermak, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Pozen. “As Pozen moves forward to commercialize its PA pipeline, our goal in collaborating with these advisors is to look beyond the industry to identify untapped digital strategies that will help us deliver an affordable and accessible product to our customers.”

Ms. Cermak says the company formed the idea when discussions began over commercializing the first product from the company’s pipeline, and company executives realized they would have to build the strategy from scratch.

“We’re putting together what we think our launch strategy is going to be for a product we anticipate two years from now is going to hit the market,” Ms. Cermak says. “We think there is a lot of learning from real experts in communication, which is why we put together the Digital Advisory Board.”

Pozen expects the DAB to give the company a much more lean, cost-efficient, and engaging marketing infrastructure and approach. Taking lessons from experts outside of the industry will allow Pozen to have a “more robust” relationship with customers, she says. Bringing in experts from companies like Wal-Mart, HealthiNation, PepsiCo, and Johnson & Johnson will help bring an eclectic mix of new ideas.

“We invited Raj [Amin] because it’s really all about patient education in a new way,” says Ms. Cermak. “That’s a cornerstone of what it is that we’re trying to do. It’s going to be a really great learning experience and a guiding body for us.”

One aspect of digital marketing may include social media. FDA still has not provided guidelines to the pharmaceutical industry regarding use of websites, like Twitter, for product marketing, and many companies are worried about being reprimanded for violating regulations through use of such sites. Facebook and Twitter, however are just one portion of the larger realm of digital communication, Ms. Cermak notes.

“There are lots of ways to engage with customers, even without the use of social media,” Ms. Cermak explains. “The industry is going to figure this out.”

Ms. Cermak says this notion is not unlike the days before direct to consumer marketing, when pharmaceutical executives never imagined advertising drugs on the television could be possible because of the strict regulations. Eventually, industry experts were able to figure out ways to do so legally.

“This too shall pass,” Ms. Cermak says of the uncertainty that digital communication brings.

For example, pharmaceutical companies can take advantages of infrastructures that are already established on the digital level, including sites like WebMD and Medscape, which can provide new ways to engage, Ms. Cermak says. “Those are trusted sites with trusted information engaging a lot of people,” she says. Epocrates, a nationally trusted physician platform, is another area that allows pharmaceutical companies to communicate with physicians.

This is where experts like Sermo’s Daniel Palestrant can lend their expertise to the board. While there is no advertising by pharmaceuticals allowed on Sermo at the moment, the use of Sermo by pharmaceutical companies is “only going to grow as we identify areas of mutual benefit between Sermo and the pharmaceuticals,” Ms. Cermak says, adding that pharma companies can ask questions, engage in dialogue at the clinical level, and have some interaction.

“What we like about this group is that they’re so visionary,” she says. “We’re so excited to start to learn from them. It will be fascinating for people to see how they think and what we can borrow from other industries, and how different it can look for pharmaceutical marketing.”

The Hawthorne Effect picked up an exclusive interview The Script Kiddies did with Student Activist Diary about the hack. The respondent on behalf of the group said Pfizer was attacked because it is “A Corrupt Corporate American Company guilty of cutting corners and killing people:”

“They are guilty of killing people through harmful drugs and clinical tests. For example, their drug Trovan killed 11 Nigerians out of 200 given the drug. We plan to achieve awareness mostly; awareness that the security online is an allusion and also that Pfizer’s crimes are intolerable and we will not deal with them. We will stand up and say, hey, this isn’t right. We will take a stand. Some say that our methods are extreme, but they have to be to achieve our goals. Pfizer is a corrupt giant, so we attacked them. Simple as that.”

Ray Kerins, VP, external affairs and worldwide communications, Pfizer, says the company has been in direct contact with Facebook since the hack was detected and the page taken down. “We want to see exactly how this happened and ensure that it never happens again,” he stated.

The company is trying to get the Facebook page back up as quickly as possible, but needs answers from people outside Pfizer first, Mr. Kerins says. “When we do find out what happened, we will share the learnings with other [pharma] companies,” he says. “I don’t want this to happen to any other companies.”

Despite the attack, Pfizer will not abandon Facebook and other social media channels, Mr. Kerins says. “We’re taking this as a lesson learned,” he says. “We understand the benefits social channels do bring, and we’re committed to using them.”

Bruce Grant, senior VP, business strategy, at Digitas Health, points out that the The Script Kiddies did not have a reasoned grievance against Pfizer, but were just repeating things they had found in the media. Pfizer was a “villain of opportunity,” he says, and the hack was not something that Pfizer could have prevented, since the security issues were all on Facebook’s end.

Ultimately, the incident is a “welcome and useful wakeup call,” and shows pharma companies that they can’t walk away from Facebook. Mr. Grant points out that the branded pages Facebook set up will not disappear, and after Aug. 15, Facebook will require companies to allow comment on the pages (the exception is pages for branded pharmaceutical products).

“It seems that Facebook is pretty determined that if people go to a Facebook page, they will have a Facebook experience,” Mr. Grant says.

Overall, the pharma industry’s biggest concern with Facebook and other social media channels remains the open airing of legitimate grievances about things such as drug side effects, rather than hacking, Mr. Grant says.

“Our advice is you don’t have a choice as to whether you have a page – your choice is whether you want to maintain appropriate control over the conversation,” he says.

(Edit: Ed Silverman at Pharmalot adds his own twist to the story.)

“Sermo Mobile allows members quick and easy access to the knowledge and expertise of leading PCPs and specialists throughout the country, anytime, anywhere,” says Daniel Palestrant, M.D., founder and CEO of Sermo. “Turning the concept of real-time medicine into reality has been our vision for some time, and this technology allows physicians to immediately impact patient care.”

Using iConsult, physicians can take or add a photograph of a physical finding, x-ray or laboratory result, choose a suitable question from the list available and then immediately send it to relevant specialists in the Sermo network. Members can view and respond in real time, offering unparalleled access to shared medical expertise. Sermo is the largest online physician community in the United States, with more than 120,000 physicians spanning 68 specialties.

Other features of Sermo Mobile include fast, easy access to Sermo discussions about clinical cases, practice management, healthcare reform and more; anytime, anywhere access to the Sermo community to ask questions or share opinions; ability to author and track posts directly from a mobile phone; and notifications that keep members informed of the most recent developments in medicine

Working in close collaboration with physicians across the country, Sermo identified an increase in mobile use in clinical settings, and the need for a mobile app to complement its online service. Sermo Mobile is available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. A partner of Janssen Global Services, LLC, Sermo will continue to develop and deliver additional real-time services that will help physicians provide more efficient and enhanced care to their patients.

(See the August issue of Med Ad News for information about another technology initiative Sermo has launched, aimed at oncologists.)

So it was no surprise to see the results of a survey forwarded to me by Wendy Blackburn, VP at InTouch Solutions Inc. InTouch, via The Harrison Group, had surveyed physicians in March on how they preferred to receive product information and found that:

• More than one third had received an iPad detail from a pharma sales representative

• Of those that had received an iPad detail, 68% reported being extremely satisfied or very satisfied with the format

• 8 in 10 rated digital detailing (iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Tablet, etc.) as the same or better than previous methods such as paper-based visual aids

• Significantly more physicians who had been in practice 20 years or less believed digital detailing was better than previous methods such as paper-based visual aids.

• The opposite was true for physicians in practice more than 20 years, who were more comfortable with paper-based details.

So yes, iPads are on whole welcomed by most doctors. But it seems that the iPad or whatever digital detail platform is used still needs a real human being presenting it. In the most recent edition of Med Ad News’ DotPharma e-newsletter, new research indicates that doctors are seeking a combination of digital and face-to-face detailing.

This research, conducted by Knowledge Networks using the Physicians Consulting Network, shows that doctors are seeking a combination of digital and in-person marketing. Although specialists and primary care doctors are increasingly relying on smartphones and tablets to check email, research medications and conditions, and take online surveys, they still prefer in-person visits with drug sales reps over electronic pharma marketing, or e-detailing, by a factor of 3-to-1.

Drawing on responses from 5,490 doctors, the 2011 Digital MD Marketing research shows that:

• 67% of PCPs and 61% of specialists now have a smartphone (64% of doctors overall)
• 27% of PCPs and specialists alike have tablet computers (such as iPads) – about 5 times the level in the general population
• Shopping and survey taking via mobile devices have grown significantly since 2010, but “e-detailing” grew less dramatically and is less common
• Reference applications, such as Epocrates and WebMD, are the most popular mobile medical “apps” – while apps from pharmaceutical manufacturers receive minimal use

Additionally:

• 79% of primary care doctors and 74% of specialists prefer in-person dialogue with reps; physicians ages 55 and over skewed higher on this answer by 12 percentage points, compared to those under 40
• 23% of primary care doctors and 28% of specialists prefer computer-based e-detailing; physicians over age 55 viewed this method only slightly less favorably than did younger physicians

Something hopeful also showed up in this research:  61% of primary care doctors and 50% of specialists still maintain an open-door policy when it comes to sales rep visits – compared with those doctors who insist that sales reps make appointments or who do not see reps at all.

So to answer the initial question, to iPad or not to iPad, the answer is a “yes” – so long as the physician is younger and there is a trusted sales rep to engage the conversation.

Increasing collaboration, growing globalization, rapidly changing compliance requirements, and increasing cost pressures are all having an impact on life sciences content management. Traditional life sciences content management systems, meanwhile, have remained largely unchanged, built on the same basic platforms and technologies and often only affordable to larger organizations with significant time and resources to invest in systems development projects.

“The parallels between the CRM marketplace when we founded Veeva in 2007 and today’s content management market are stunning,” says Matt Wallach, chief strategy officer, Veeva. “The traditional leaders have been acquired, their technology is antiquated, the solutions cost a fortune just to maintain, and customers are frustrated. Really frustrated. That’s why we created Veeva Vault. Using the very latest cloud computing technologies, Vault lets life sciences companies more effectively manage their regulated content at a lower cost. Better and cheaper, just what the industry needs today.”

According to Veeva executives, well-designed and built cloud-based business solutions are more flexible, more mobile, and easier to use, share, and maintain than traditional on-premise software solutions.

Veeva Vault is led by Jen Goldsmith, who has helped life science companies design and implement content management solutions for more than 15 years. “Vault is the first cloud-computing content management system that’s built specifically for the life sciences industry,” Ms. Goldsmith told Med Ad News. “There are other cloud content management systems out there, but none of them cater specifically to life sciences and address things like 21 CFR Part 11 compliance or even the process specific components that exist or are necessary for different areas within life sciences.”

According to Ms. Goldsmith, the Vault was built from the ground up specifically for the needs of this particularly regulated industry. “We’ll be able to do everything from a platform perspective: store the content, version it, have review and approval work flows around it, place the appropriate security around it, and in addition to that base regulated content management capability, we’ll also have what we call process-specific applications,” Ms. Goldsmith says. “These are a set of application capabilities that allow you to enable specific business process in life sciences, out of the box.”

Cloud computing expert Eric Bezar has been in charge of designing and building Veeva Vault. “Life sciences companies have forever been forced to build custom applications on top of generic content management platforms like Documentum and Sharepoint,” Mr. Bezar says. “This is a frustrating and costly approach. With Vault, we are delivering both the platform and the applications this industry needs, and the results will be nothing short of breathtaking.”