Editor’s Letter

So…What’s New?

Rather than my meandering musings, I thought I’d treat you to some updates on things that we’ve covered—news about exciting happenings in the industry. We have been following the progress of Align Biopharma, the subject of an article in our February/March 2017 issue. Align is a life sciences industry standards group, established to make it easier for healthcare professionals to work with life sciences. It neil green ber g was founded by six of the largest global life sciences companies: Allergan, AstraZeneca, Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Pfizer, in cooperation with Veeva. These leaders have now been joined by Lilly, Merck and Takeda. They’re making it easier and faster for healthcare professionals to connect with the companies that provide the products and services. This spring they released their Identity Management Standard and solicited feedback on it. This summer they’ll publish the final version, to be followed later in the year by the Consent and Communication Preferences Standard. To follow the progress, go to the Align site. Meanwhile, The Aurora Project is also steaming ahead. This is another industry-wide project that we covered, aimed at defining and assisting in development of patient centricity standards. It’s something nearly every company has been working on, but which still needs some focus and clarity. Aurora’s Paul Simms, chairman of eyeforpharma, and Jill Donahue, author at EngageRx, have been drawing on the wisdom of hundreds of industry thinkers around the globe, and are seeking an even wider audience to promote numerous initiatives. For the full story, and to share your own genius with them, check out Aurora here. Another much-welcome effort is the Universal Patient Language project, started by Bristol-Myers Squibb but available to everyone. Its goals are to translate complex scientific language into easily-digestible information, so that communications to patients make more sense. In addition to language, it uses icons, visuals and colors so that data is streamlined, accessible and usable. Take a look at it here. Finally, just to pat ourselves on the back, I’m happy to say that Jill Donahue (see above) has joined us as Contributing Editor. Her interviews with world-beaters have been enlightening our readership for several issues. One of her subjects, Adam Grant, co-wrote the recent best-seller “Option B” with Sheryl Sandberg. And what’s coming next? Watch these pages to find out!

As always, we continue to look for the value of your contributions. Let us know if you have an idea for an article—the people we write for are the people who write for us.

Neil Greenberg, Editor

To become an HS&M contributing author or provide feedback, please email me at ngreenberg@hsandm.com.

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