ADVISORY/Brokers May Cut Costs for Pharmaceutical Companies.

Business Editors

ADVISORY...

--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 2001

TOPIC: Some brokering companies reportedly are establishing Web sites geared at
helping pharmaceutical and biotech companies recruit patients for their trials.
A story in the New York Times claims that the services, which are free to
subjects, allegedly promise to cut down on fees the pharmaceutical and biotech
companies pay to find appropriate subjects. While some experts claim the
service will give patients more choices, others insist that greater choice may
add to more confusion among patients and doctors about available treatments.
EXPERTS: ExpertSource can offer several highly qualified experts to comment on
this story:

Mrs. Elizabeth Johnson served in executive positions across provider organizations for 15 years prior to joining Healthlink five years ago. She possesses extensive knowledge of provider operations from every perspective. In the last five years, Mrs. Johnson has used and expanded that foundation by developing critical working knowledge of the role of IT in enabling best practices to be deployed by healthcare providers. Having spent the last two years in acquiring an in-depth knowledge of HIPAA and sharing that knowledge in over one hundred presentations, Mrs. Johnson currently serves as the Healthlink National Practice Leader for HIPAA. PR: Adelle Heinz ([e-mail]/800.382.7094 ext 208).

Dr. Vaman Rao is an expert in how the Internet will change the pharmaceutical supply chain. Prior to LifetecNet he managed pharmaceutical/life sciences operations in Europe, Japan, and the US. PR: Corinth Group Communications ([e-mail]/212/219-0800).

David Dranove is the Walter McNerney Distinguished Professor of Health Industry Management at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He is also Professor of the Department of Management and Strategy. Previously Professor Dranove was the chair of the Department of Management and Strategy and was the Richard Paget Distinguished Professor of Management and Strategy. He has a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Stanford University. Professor Dranove's research and teaching focus on problems in industrial organization and business strategy with an emphasis on the health care industry. He has published over seventy research papers, monographs, and book chapters, and is coauthor of the popular textbook The Economics of Strategy and the trade book How Hospitals Survived. His most recent book, The Economic Evolution of American Health Care: From Marcus Welby to Managed Care, published by the Princeton University Press, has garnered considerable praise and attention. The Association of University Programs in Health Administration awarded Professor Dranove the John Thompson Prize, in recognition of his contributions to health services research. Professor Dranove has received numerous other prizes for his research, including, most recently, the 1998 National Institute for Health Care Management Research Award, the 1999 Association of Health Service Research Paper of the Year Award, and the 1999 Sudexho Marriott Faculty Publication of the Year Award. In addition to being a prolific author and scholar, Professor Dranove regularly consults with leading public and private sector organizations about issues in strategic management and antitrust. He has also served on several advisory boards and boards of directors of organizations in the health care and professional services industries. [e-mail]

Mr. Jack Luchese is CEO of CytRx Corp, a publicly-held biotech company. PR: Mike Anderson ([e-mail]/407-682-2001).

Ruth McBride is the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Axio Research, a contract research organization (CRO)located in Seattle focusing on data management and statistics. Ms. McBride has over 25 years of experience in Clinical Trials. She has served on the Board of the Society for Clinical Trials, the Program Committee for the SCT Annual Meeting and as Associate Editor for Controlled Clinical Trials. Ms. McBride has been at the forefront of developing new technologies for clinical data management, including Internet-based data collection systems, Interactive Voice Recognition Systems (IVRS) and automated data cleaning systems. [phone]; [e-mail]; PR: Sharon Schierle ([e-mail]/).

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