Brand Institute Establishes New Subsidiary to Minimize Medication Errors; FDA's Jerry Phillips Joins Private Sector to Continue Risk Management Work.

Business Editors

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 2004

A new company will further the cause of drug safety and risk management as Capt. Thomas G. (Jerry) Phillips, R.Ph., a world expert in this field, will assume the role of president upon retiring from the U.S. Public Health Service at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this May.

Brand Institute announced today that Capt. Phillips will head up Drug Safety Institute (DSI) and address risk assessment and management issues associated with pharmaceutical product nomenclature, labeling and packaging. Capt. Phillips is the associate director for medication error prevention in the office of drug safety and the acting director of FDA's division of medication errors and technical support.

For the past 11 years, Brand Institute has been the premier full-service brand identity company, specializing in pharmaceutical and biotechnology products' name development.

"Our emphasis at DSI will be safety first and foremost," said James L. Dettore, Brand Institute president and chief executive officer.

Today's announcement takes Brand Institute's long-held dedication to risk assessment and management and preventing prescription errors even further.

"I am excited by the opportunity to continue my work in improving patient safety by preventing medication errors, but from a different vantage," Capt. Phillips said. "At DSI, our plan is to make the company's methodology for brand name safety testing even more reflective of FDA's review process. Also, DSI will offer a medication error prevention analysis for new product labels and packaging and unique expertise in various risk management strategies."

Capt. Phillips joined FDA in 1988. He contributed to the recent FDA rule that requires pharmaceutical product bar coding and the 1999 IOM report "To Err is Human." He has been the FDA representative and chair of the national coordinating council for medication error reporting and prevention and is an expert member on two USP committees - the nomenclature and labeling committee and the safe medication use committee.

Capt. Phillips also has collaborated with the World Health Organization to provide adverse event data for certain medication errors that have occurred worldwide, and he has been involved in quarterly videoconferences with the EU, Canada and Australia to discuss pharmacovigilance activities and shared adverse drug events.