You may ask why I’d have any reason to relate today’s events to the PharmaCI Conference.  And you may also be saying that it’s premature to have any long-standing opinion regarding the outcome of the Pfizer/Wyeth agreement that hit the press this morning.  Merger plans fall through.  Acquisitions take a lot of time to approve.  These are early days of the Pfizer/Wyeth melding.  And that’s exactly why I think it’s important to think about the PharmaCI Conference today. 

Competitive Intelligence guides business leaders to make informed decisions.  In order to stay informed, it’s important to to keep one’s intelligence network sizzling, and one of the best ways to do that is to stay close to other intelligence professionals in the pharma industry.  Last fall when I attended the PharmaCI Conference, I interacted with colleagues from around the globe.  I was educated by impressive speakers, panelists, and vendors.  I had the chance to meet new colleagues and to catch up with former colleagues.  In essence, the PharmaCI Conference is the best of its kind for CI executives and other professionals. 

Predictions about the future, and the integration of intelligence subject matter ranging from therapeutics to devices to diagnostics made the conference one of the most worthwhile uses of my time.  Everybody who is anybody was in attendance, and so through the creation of a PharmaCI blog, and the wonders of Web 2.0, the intent is to keep intelligence sharing and networking an on going process.

As you continue on your path in this new year, please let us know what we can do to enhance this blog and the PharmaCI website.  In the meantime, keep your eyes on the bouncing ball.  You never know what’s going to impact our industry!

Join us at this premier gathering and network with other key decision makers as you learn about the most pressing and relevant issues facing the competitive intelligence community today. This is the only event featuring a world-class line up of speakers and panelists offering their unique insights and expertise on the topics you care about most!

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
Each year, the Pharma CI Conference & Exhibition represents months of intensive research with the world’s leading experts in this field. We continuously consult with our distinguished Board of Advisors and other key industry leaders to ensure we have the most current issues and discussion topics in the program, so that every session is a must attend session.

You will benefit from attending this event if you are an executive or professional from the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and diagnostics industries with responsibilities or involvement in the following areas:

* Competitive Intelligence
* Business Intelligence
* Information Specialist
* Commercial/Customer Insights
* Strategic Planning
* Market/Marketing Research
* Decision Analysis/Decision Support
* Business Analytics
* New Product Planning/Development
* Forecasting
* Librarian
* Brand Management/Product Management
* Marketing
* Business Portfolio Planning
* Strategic/Business Analysis
* Business Development
* Licensing
* Technical Analysis
* Portfolio Management/Planning
* Project Management
* Risk Management
* Research Planning
* Research & Development
* Regulatory
* Scientist
* Legal/Regulatory
* Outsourcing
* Manufacturing

This conference would also be of interest to consulting organizations, software solutions, law firms, and other service providers working in this area.

PHARMA CI has been planning the creation of a blog where issues surrounding Competitive Intelligence related to pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, devices, diagnostics and other areas can be surfaced and discussed in a virtual forum. 

To begin this endeavor, this blogger had to sit back and ask what is relevant to most of today’s intelligence professionals.  Since unlimited topics are available for study and reflective blogging, I thought I’d start by looking at emerging trends and how they may impact the organizations and patients we serve.

That brings me to the topic du jour – are our traditional approaches to competitive intelligence under “quant” attack? 

To begin, I want to focus on a recent Forbes.com magazine article entitled Man Vs. Machine on Wall Street.  In this article, Gene Network Sciences, a tiny biotechnology company in Cambridge, MA believes it can make Wall Street smarter by getting rid of humans.  Super quants (computers) vs quants (humans responsible for quantitative analyses) – let the games begin!

Yes, that’s right.  Let’s get rid of the humans, and interject some sensible intelligence into the world’s most dominant financial structure.  These days, after looking at my 401ks and IRA’s, I’m willing to give anything a shot in order to shore up the financial mess the world is experiencing.

What’s compelling about the approach is that it is based on the same principles of using supercomputers that Gene Network Sciences uses to help Pfizer and Biogen Idec discover drugs.  The reasoning is that the economy and financial systems are very complex networks, not dissimilar, fundamentally, from the networks that genes use to control our cells.  According to Colin Hill, who founded Gene Network Systems, market predictions could best be made from all of the trading and other financial data by using computers to do the thinking.

Predictive modeling in finance based on models used to predict new successful medicines is, at the very least, a good starting point for the PHARMA CI blog initiative.  Essentially it challenges us to think about how we traditionally provide intelligence and value, and how that model may be under attack because of advances in predictive network computing. 

Some will assume that it can never be done.  We’ll always need human intelligence in order to do the best job possible.  (Hmmm, I wonder.  I’m not sold.  I can’t help thinking about that computer chip in my car that manages to take over the control of my anti-lock brakes and acceleration when I hit a patch of ice.  It provides intelligence more quickly and accurate than I ever could imagine.)

So, what are your thoughts?  Does our profession need to be concerned about the quantitative decision-making abilities of computers?  Or is this just another flavor of the week.  Perhaps a few moments between the covers of Stephen Baker’s The Numerati will provide you with further food for thought.