Blog
Thursday, February 2, 2006
US Census Information
According to the most recent US Census, one-third of the United States’ population is non-white. California is 60% non-white. Yet, culturally diverse research physicians and patients are only a small fraction of today’s US clinical research landscape. Google paints the picture this way: - Search: Clinical Trials: 75,800,000 hits - Search: Minorities and Clinical Trials: 474,000 hits* *Most citations underscoring the lack of minorities in clinical trials Just as the recent approval of Bidil® demonstrated the case for different treatment approaches for culturally diverse populations, there is also strong evidence indicating the need for different approaches in reaching, motivating ...
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 06:40 0 comments
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Information from MedScape
Just reading a paper on MedScape – So each year more doctor visits occur with Family Practitioners/General/Internal Medicine and Pediatrics that all of specialties combined. Further less than 1% of Doctor Visits in the US take place at an Academic Medical Center. Indeed, some clear guidance for us all as we balance the mix of investigators for our studies.
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 11:15 0 comments
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Sundays in the US
What do we do on Sundays in the US? Football (attend and watch on TV), baseball (ditto), basketball (ditto), NASCAR (ditto) – Now add all those attending and watching these sporting events together and you still don’t have the number of people that attend a worship service on Sunday.
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 06:40 0 comments
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Pass Throughs
Pass throughs – I have always held the belief and certainly had some observations that pass through pricing structures lead to higher total costs. I would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with anyone that has data to explore and either refute or validate my claim. For example, travel as a pass through, observationally leads to higher trip costs than a fixed negotiated trip fee that may have some over/under for the service provider. As buyers – what is the sticking point to consistently leaning toward higher cost pass-through structures than alternatives? Perhaps the negotiating resources are not worth the ...
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 23:18 0 comments
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Washington Cabs
Taken a Washington DC cab lately? You should see the “rate card” – literally – different rates for different times of day, various rates for various types of traffic issues, a charge if you need to use the trunk, a per person charge even to the same destination, etc. I don’t have a problem with this per se, beyond the complexity. To me, it appears to be a Washingtonian way to justify getting more money to the cabbies which is fine with me if they actually get it after the Washington fees, taxes, licenses, permits, tolls, ...
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 05:20 0 comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
The Weakness Regarding Clinical Trial Execution
For me, the weakness regarding clinical trial execution is more about the process than the science. Yes, there are clinical/scientific alternatives to examine and potential variations on the science side exist regarding meeting regulatory regulatory/labeling objectives, but once a clinical trial is underway, process and project management are the key determinants of success in my observation. Here is where we can look outside of our science-based culture to places like Progressive auto insurance that cut accident claim processing time from 23 days to 17 minutes or Countrywide Mortgage that reduced mortgage application handlers from 63 to 4. These are dramatic and tectonic ...
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 06:58 0 comments
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
GM Vs. The Rest
Just prior to GM and other US auto maker travails, a stat was listed citing BMW sales of 175,000 cars with profits of $2 billion and the same period GM sold more than 10 times the volume of cars, but with little profit to show. I just read a comparison of Porsche sales to GM citing the 2 companies had a very similar market capitalizations despite the enormous disparity in size and that trailing 6 months, Porsche had $200 million in profits while GM lost more than $4 billion. GM is losing money on a faster pace than Porsche’s growth. All this to put into ...
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 22:22 0 comments
Monday, December 5, 2005
MBAs Vs. Pharmacists
If I am interpreting the data correctly, the world’s business schools produce more MBAs each year than there are practicing pharmacists (my educational background) in the US – that is more MBAs in one year than the cumulative total of practicing pharmacists. I will have to check, but my instincts tell me there are more lawyers than MBAs too. Also thought provoking is the total count for all health professionals – most of us can guess in the ballpark of the total number of physicians – say 700,000 plus or minus 100,000. If you count nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, etc., ...
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 05:51 0 comments
Thursday, December 1, 2005
A Key Pillar
One of the key pillars to our capitalist economy is the intellectual property system and this is of particular importance to our industry to be sure. With develop time consuming much of the patent life of a compound and counterfeiters attacking the actual market life, the challenge to obtain a return on the drug development investments is exceedingly challenging. The above referenced Lehman report also noted that of top 300 branded pharmaceuticals sold in 2000, 98 had peak sales of less than $200M, 85 had sales between $200M-$500M and the balance had sales in excess of $500M. Again, would Vegas take these odds? ...
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 06:19 0 comments
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Averages
Averages are both useful and dangerous. With a large enough samples, averages can provide useful guidance. However, consider a sales manager that has a sales person that has sold one project for $50,000 and one for $5,000,000 – it would be foolish to forecast sales based on an average sale of $2,5M. Further, many projections in our industry are not linear, which compounds the errors associated with averaging. Means and scenario ranges can be an alternative. Think about the best conclusions to draw from these two “averages”: The average clinical trial requires 200 hours of site time per patient and the ...
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Posted By Scott Ballenger at 05:44 0 comments