Sibyl Shalo

It's twelve o'clock-do you know where your reps are? According to research from Health Strategies Group, lunches provide one of the few opportunities in today's short-call environment for sit-down discussions with doctors. The average length of a lunch is 13 minutes, with an average of three physicians per meeting.

"The worst thing in the world that any of us could do would be for one part of our CME enterprise to interfere with either the professional or legal obligations of other parts of the enterprise," Murray Kopelow, chief executive of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), said in his opening remarks as he addressed an initially antagonistic-if not hostile-crowd on the second day of Pharmaceutical Executive's Second Annual Med Ed Forum last month in Philadelphia.

Blockbusters may not grow on trees, but sometimes they hide in desk drawers. At least that's how it was for one of pharma's most enduring brands--one which, near the end of its patent life, boasts 16 indications, four formulations, and three (recent) billion-dollar years in a row.

Point a finger at a map of the United States and try to find a state that's not competing to attract pharma and biotech business. It's nearly impossible. The story is the same in Europe and Asia. Around the world, countries, regions, and cities are trying to build their economies, and the life sciences are a key element in their plans.