Pharmaceutical Executive-05-01-2003

A powerful new tool is available to FDA through a first-of-its-kind cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) between FDA and EduNeering, a developer of computer-based compliance training systems.

Contrary to popular belief, physicians still can't retrieve the full medical history of every patient who walks into their offices. Nor can they zap prescriptions through a clearinghouse that shows whether patients are eligible for coverage and reviews all medications they are taking to forestall drug?drug interactions.

According to many legislators and the media, pharma companies, abetted by Madison Avenue, lead the corporate villain list, just below auditors and errant CEOs.

Just a few years ago, financiers were celebrating the "recession-proof" US economy, betting on the success of dot-coms and ridiculing the cautious few. Today, pharma industry experts tout mergers and acquisitions as a panacea to solve growth problems, reduce costs, increase sales, and renew R&D productivity.

Check out the ranking of the world's largest pharma companies in the fourth annual Pharm Exec 50.

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In the excellent online magazine The Edge (www.edge.org), Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, poses a riddle about risk: Imagine that a 40-year-old woman has her first mammogram and it comes back positive. The incidence of the disease in her age group is 1 percent. The test is 90 percent accurate, and it has a false-positive rate of 9 percent. What's the probability that the woman has cancer?