Recently in Innovation Category

Katie with the hosts of the US Chamber Business Civic Leadership Center report release event at the INOVA Fairfax Hospital Campus in Falls Church, VA

Dan Troy, our general counsel, is a firm believer that the billable hour promotes inefficiency, and I agree.

When Dan joined GSK in 2008, he asked me to transition our outside legal spend from billable hours to alternative fee arrangements (AFAs), such as fixed and capped fees. At that time, GSK spent less than 3% through AFAs. Transforming our billing was a big task, and I wasn't sure we could make it work for complex litigations and transactions across the globe. But my team and I were willing to give it a try--and we've been quite successful.

Today, more than 65% of our external legal spend is through AFAs. We've significantly reduced costs while maintaining excellent legal representation for the company.

Our AFAs sometimes include an electronic reverse auction program, suggested by our Procurement colleagues. They had been successfully using online sourcing for sophisticated services in other areas of the company, so we decided to give it a try. It worked, and so far, that program has included more than 85 firms.

There are times when the lowest bid doesn't win, because another firm may have  expertise better suited for a particular matter. We want to have long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with law firms, so it's important to set the right assumptions and to be flexible when things change.

This process has helped GSK save many millions of dollars, which means more funds available to devote to our core mission of helping patients do more, feel better, and live longer.

This week, the Financial Times honored GSK Legal with the 2012 Innovative Lawyer award, recognizing us as a "Standout" law department for "Dramatically reducing external legal spend through AFAs and the development and implementation of an electronic reverse auction system."  This award is a real testament to the successes we've had in transforming our outside legal billing.  It's the third time this year that GSK Legal has been honored with an award for our work in this area. This summer, we were named an American Corporate Counsel (ACC) Value Champion for making a difference through creativity and value-based legal management skills. And in September, Inside Counsel magazine named GSK Legal to their IC10 list of the 10 most innovative law departments based, in part, on our AFAs and reverse auction initiatives.

I'm now a firm believer that AFAs can work for almost any legal matter--in any industry. It's been eye opening and rewarding to lead this work at GSK.

Over the past many months there have been countless journal articles, news reports, and blog postings in the US on the topic of comparative effectiveness research or "CER," a type of research that compares available medications and other treatments in order to help doctors and patients make decisions about which treatment is most appropriate for an individual patient.  Comparative effectiveness has gotten a boost from the Affordable Care Act, which provided federal funding for CER to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).  In addition, individuals and groups from all types of healthcare backgrounds--clinicians, patients, health policy researchers and payers--have laid out justifications for CER and how such research should be conducted, analyzed, communicated, and used.

At GSK, we are focused on determining how to properly design, and apply, CER in the real world.  Many of our colleagues are working to understand how to develop and deliver medicines and vaccines to meet many unmet medical needs and to help providers ensure that these medicines and vaccines will be used for the right patient at the right time.  Recognizing the importance of CER to answering questions about who should receive a specific medication or treatment, we are also working to ensure CER is conducted in a robust manner with appropriate rigor, transparency, and strong methodologies. 

However, we also believe that research alone is not sufficient--we know that research findings must be replicable, clearly communicated, properly contextualized, and broadly disseminated.

We are excited by a new series of articles this week in Health Affairs that focus on the communication of CER findings, who should be able to share study results, and how best to share this information--including the role that pharmaceutical companies should play .

While everyone realizes that CER has an important role in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our healthcare system, pharmaceutical companies, despite their extensive expertise in their products, face significant challenges in speaking about CER studies.

In Health Affairs, a group of authors from the National Pharmaceutical Council, including Jack Bailey, SVP, Policy, Payers and Vaccines, GSK, discuss how Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations and policies may limit how pharmaceutical companies communicate information about CER findings and may even hinder companies' efforts to respond to CER studies involving their products. The authors call for FDA to provide clear guidance that allows companies to participate meaningfully in discussions about CER studies.

CER is anything but simple, but whether it is questions about the design, communications or more topics to come, we look forward to being a part of the conversation.

On September 11, I attended the InformationWeek 500 awards event where our North America Pharmaceuticals IT organization was awarded a place on the list. (That is me with my colleague, Carl, at left.)  Now in its 24th year, the InformationWeek 500 designation is awarded to the nation's most innovative information technology organizations. During the event, we heard senior leaders from a range of companies describe how technology innovation is transforming and disrupting entire industries. This is certainly the case in healthcare.

In fact, the same consumer trends that have driven widespread use of mobile phones, tablets, and apps are also now fundamentally changing how patients and healthcare professionals access and use healthcare information. As an example, today 85% of physicians in the United States use a smart phone for professional purposes. The rate of mobile health adoption by consumers has also doubled over the last two years, with 26% of US consumers now using mobile phones for health related activities.  Electronic medical record use is also growing rapidly, with some estimates forecasting that 90% of physicians will be using them by 2019.

In response to some of these trends, at GSK we're transforming our approach to digital information. One of the key digital innovation projects that got InformationWeek's attention was a major effort to deploy more than 5,000 tablet devices equipped with new apps and mobile customer management tools across our entire US sales force. These new resources make it possible for our sales representatives to communicate key information about our products anywhere at any time, in a way that is much more in line with the new ways our customers work and gather information. We also use the same customer management tools within our call centers, so that customers can benefit from a similar experience regardless of how they choose to contact GSK.

Clearly this is just the beginning of our innovation journey, but the public recognition we received this week from the InformationWeek 500 is an encouraging sign that we are on the right path.

UPDATE: Apparently Dr. Steinman died a few days ago, and the committee was not aware. Whatever the outcome of the award with this latest development (Nobels are not awarded posthumously), Dr. Steinman's work is important. Out thoughts are with his family, friends, and colleagues. 

Congratulations to Bruce Beutler (US), Jules Hoffmann (France), and  Ralph Steinman (Canadian born, but based in the US), three scientists who share the Nobel Prize in medicine. The Nobel Committee announced the award at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute. According to the NY Times, the work of the three scientists has "enabled the development of improved vaccines against infectious diseases. In the long term they could also yield better treatments of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and chronic inflammatory diseases."

Great news for patients--let's hear it for innovation!

Those of us who live and work in the Triangle area of North Carolina (Chapel Hill--Durham--Raleigh) know we've got a good thing going. Now the 14 million passengers on Delta will be able to read all about it when they're flying around the world or the U.S. during the month of July. The Triangle, and companies including GlaxoSmithKline, are featured in a 36-page section of the Delta Sky Magazine found in the airline's passenger seatbacks.

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker and Durham Mayor Bill Bell joined with executives from Delta, the Raleigh-Durham International Airport and area leaders to celebrate the official recognition and bragging rights. The article, headlined "The Power of Three," looks at how North Carolina in the 1950s chose to capitalize on its three world-renown research universities--Duke, North Carolina State, and the University of North Carolina--to create a thriving center of innovation, culture, and diversity.

There were 41 interviews with well known local residents including Duke Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski, musician Branford Marsalis, and GSK's own Chief Medical Officer Ellen Strahlman. For GSK, North Carolina is home to about 5,000 employees in R&D, manufacturing and commercial operations. It was here that GSK scientists joined with colleagues at the National Cancer Institute and Duke University to develop the first therapy targeting HIV/AIDs in 1987. Most of GSK's medicines for the US are made in the state. And the company contributes about $1.7 million a year to nonprofit organizations focusing on health and education in the state.

So there's a lot more to this area than sweet tea, barbecue, and basketball. Maybe that's what really attracted folks from around the world and what keeps them so happy. Read all about it here.

Generations of scientists have worked with physicians and patients to deliver medicines that treat and prevent diseases better than ever before. We are learning more each day about how the body works, how to manage disease more safely and effectively and how to prevent or eliminate diseases that once were fatal. New medicines still offer the promise of helping us feel better, be more productive, and reduce our overall healthcare bill. One area of research that seems to be showing promise is the relationship between gender and symptoms.

Did you know that some diseases affect women more often than men? Or that women may suffer different symptoms from the same disease?

It's true that women are more often affected by diseases including osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, and age-related macular degeneration.

Dr. Lorraine Fitzpatrick is a Medicine Development Leader for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) working to better understand one of those diseases--postmenopausal osteoporosis--and to develop new medicines to treat this bone disease which affects about 8 million American women and 2 million American men.

She notes that long ago, most of the medical research was in men. But today scientists are making progress understanding some of the science behind the differences in health between men and women.

For example, Dr. Fitzpatrick said we know today that women's bodies react to stress by producing higher levels of cytokines. This could lead to increased frequency in women of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

But there is much more to learn. Listen to an interview with Dr. Fitzpatrick or read more about the 851 medicines in development for diseases that disproportionately affect women. 

Today GSK continues its journey to increase transparency and allow the public more insight into our company operations by publishing our U.S. research payments. I was the chief compliance representative on a cross-functional team for this project, and this represents--for me--the culmination of two years of effort.  It is one day in my career that I will look back on with pride. 

While our critics may discount our work, I think it's important to remember that this is a voluntary disclosure - no one is forcing us to publish this information. It would have been easier to wait until 2013 when the federal Sunshine Act provisions come into effect in the U.S. This legislation will require the pharmaceutical and device industries to collect information on payments to physicians and submit it to the government for potential posting from 2013 on. However, we've chosen to tackle the transparency issue head-on, assemble the data and put it in the public domain for all to see, and, perhaps more importantly, critique. We want public feedback, and visitors to our website can comment by calling the GSK Response Center.

Last week I attended a symposium at the US Department of State titled "The Role of Innovation in Addressing Global Health." GSK CEO Andrew Witty had been asked to participate in a roundtable discussion on ideas on how the public and private sectors can work together to overcome diseases of the developing world. The event, hosted by Under Secretary of State Robert Hormats, marked the first time the US Government convened a multi-agency dialogue geared towards creating public-private partnerships to address global health challenges. Representatives from across the global health community--from the White House, State Department, USAID, the President's Malaria Initiative, Health and Human Services (HHS), USTR, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Bank, Sabin Vaccine Institute--participated in the program.

Over the past two years, GSK has expanded a number of its commitments to improve research and development in the field of neglected tropical disease, and to expand access to these medicines. 

Through my work in communications at GSK, I've had the opportunity to hear our executives speak about our commitments to global health many times with great pride.  What always seems to resonate with me is our mission.  Andrew may have said it best at the event when he remarked, "The mission of GSK is very simple--to help people to do more, feel better, live longer. Nowhere in that mission does it say (If they can afford it).  (If they happen to live in the West). It's a simple, broad, all encompassing statement and it essentially encapsulates everyone who works for the company."

We take our responsibility to patients around the world seriously.  It's what drives our tens of thousands of employees to come to work and what inspires us to be more responsive, flexible and open to new ideas that address the challenges that face us.

Learn more about how GSK contributes to the developing world, as well as innovative ideas being pursued by the US Government and NGO community.