Sharing Health Expertise at Drug Information Association’s 46th Annual Meeting

Join us at the Drug Information Association’s 46th Annual Meeting (#DIA2010) in Washington, DC on June 13-17.

Health experts from Academic Network will be on hand to discuss our expansive portfolio which includes expert pharmacovigilance and recall/retrieval services. “DIA is among the most established trade group in the industry,” said Don Houghton, Director of Contact Center and Online Operations. “There is no better place than the annual conference to get the exposure, build the relationships, and have the kinds of conversations that happen here.”

Academic Network will attend the conference during the exhibition dates of June 14-17. Please contact Rachel Greben  503-432-4650 to arrange a meeting or informational webinar. View our press release: http://pitch.pe/67961.

A new study released this month by Battelle, the nation’s largest independent nonprofit research and development organization, traces developments in the bioscience industry on a state-by-state and national level.

Released in collaboration with the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), the Battelle/BIO State Bioscience Initiatives 2010 contains the most recent data available and shows that publicly traded bioscience-related companies on the whole generated positive net growth through 2009.

The report is a compendium of national, state and metropolitan data on bioscience employment and growth trends from 2001 to 2008, according to the latest detailed industry data to be released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It also presents a series of key bioscience performance metrics and state policy and program trends that are designed to accelerate the growth of the biosciences.

Oregon has fared well over the past decade. The report found that “The bioscience industry in Oregon has generally outpaced job growth compared with the national sector since 2001. The largest State bioscience subsector is medical devices and equipment (5,565 jobs). Academic bioscience research and development expenditures in Oregon reached $399 million in 2008, led by nearly equal amounts in the biological and medical sciences. Both academic R&D in the biosciences and funding from the National Institutes of Health are well concentrated in Oregon with per capita figures that are above average. NIH baseline funding has increased by 8.7 percent since 2004, and when the additional funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) are taken into account this growth rate reaches 30.4 percent. During the last six years, $109 million in venture capital was invested in State bioscience companies, mainly in pharmaceuticals and medical/health information technology. The 879 bioscience patents issued over the same six-year period were well diversified across fields.”

Executive Summary: http://www.bio.org/local/battelle2010/OREGON_profile.pdf

Oregon Report: http://www.bio.org/local/battelle2010/OREGON_profile.pdf

Social media tools give consumers have an increasingly active voice in monitoring product recalls. How do major brands respond in the face of a recall? This week’s article in the Washington Post considers how companies must deviate from tradition and develop new strategies to respond and communicate to social media-savvy consumers.

At Academic Network, many urban myths are addressed each day as we assist consumers in their structuring healthier lives. Diet is basic and salt is frequently a topic we address.  For most of us, when it comes to salt we find it has been denied a place at the table.

Salt has a bad reputation, but what if it’s not so bad for folks in the US or around the world?   That perspective was recently featured in the Science Times Section of the New York Times: (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/science/23tier.html). As John Tierney of the Times quoted Dr. David McCarron, “until unbiased, properly controlled clinical trials are performed, government regulation of salt is unwise and potentially harmful to many individuals.”

Academic Network leadership is pleased to be in attendance at today’s swearing in ceremony of Dr. Regina Benjamin as the 18th US Surgeon General.

Morningstar, Inc., a leading provider of independent investment research, today named Mark Miller, chairman, president, and CEO of Stericycle Inc. as its 2009 CEO of the Year! Read more.

Medical Experts Enhance the Online Identity of Your Product

Your customers are talking about you online. You want to be fluent in the conversation.

Academic Network, a Stericycle company, has developed an outsourcing online management service targeted to the pharmaceutical, food and beverage industries.  The service includes both an online audit and ongoing reputation monitoring by health professionals trained in medicine, nutrition and identifying adverse events. The service is designed to offer companies an outsourcing solution at a fraction of the cost of building and maintaining an online reputation management system in-house.

Clients use Academic Network’s professional social media staff to monitor and engage with others online, thereby enhancing their brand. “Academic Network has created an outsourcing model to manage the risk and provide the expertise to help companies not only launch a social media campaign but maintain their reputation online at a fraction of the cost,” said Kate McCarron, Vice President of Academic Network.  A successful social media campaign involves dedicated resources to effectively monitor and manage online conversations about a company’s products.  Academic Network’s health professionals provide the expertise to assure that any adverse conversations online are brought to the attention of their clients to protect the safety of their products and customers.

Many companies have started to use social media tools but have not considered the overall costs to build and maintain a successful online program. Academic Network offers an outsourcing solution that will add expertise, while reducing overall costs in equipment, software and staff. The savings incurred mirrors that of traditional call center outsourcing, and takes advantage of the shared resources that Academic Network offers. “We allow companies to focus on their core competencies while maintaining an excellent level of expertise and service” states McCarron.

Kathleen McCarron, business founder and VP of Academic Network, has successfully completed her first New York City Marathon! Running on behalf of the National Stroke Association, Ms. McCarron hopes to raise the bar on stroke education and support. Her dedication to top level health education is one of the touchstones of her professional work, and we applaud this extraordinary endeavor. Read more in today’s Oregonian. http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2009/11/after_stroke_portland_womans_b.html

Today’s article in the TimesOnline (London, UK) asks “Is salt really the Devil’s ingredient?” Focusing on a recent piece in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN), the article questions the growing portrayal of salt as a primary dietary culprit.  The CJASN article, coauthored by Dr. David McCarron, questions the regulation of sodium consumption through public policy, stating that science must ultimately determine the matter.

Innovative Portland-based healthcare communications company named once again one of fastest growing inner city companies in the nation

Portland, Ore. - BusinessWeek Magazine and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) have ranked Academic Network, a Stericycle company, an innovative & award-winning medical and health communications firm 49^th on the 11th Annual Top Inner City 100 list. 2009 is the second consecutive year that Academic Network has ranked in the top 100 awardees.

The ICIC was established to recognize the fastest growing companies in America that are based in the “inner city” and provide new business growth potential to their communities. Innovative practices and sustained growth are the predominant traits of the 2009 Inner City 100 award winners. Through an annual national competition, ICIC ranks the 100 fastest-growing businesses in inner city settings. The 2009 award ceremony was held May 20^th in Boston.

Academic Network, now a company of Stericycle, Inc., focuses on healthcare communications services to a wide range of corporate and governmental clients involved in the pharmaceutical, medical device, food and beverage sectors. The firm’s expertise in consumer affairs ranges from contact center solutions for consumer affairs and clinical trial recruitment, adverse event reporting, design of disease specific websites and social media strategies directed at consumers and health professionals. These platforms provide clients with creative and tested strategies for interacting with consumers.

The founders of Academic Network, David McCarron, MD, FACP, and Kathleen A. McCarron, veteran healthcare professionals– have each worked with the pharmaceutical and food industries for over thirty years within the academic and private sector. Academic Network was established in the early 1990’s to fill the void in the telecommunications industry for services focusing solely on health-related products and issues.

“Our staff of healthcare professionals that include physicians, nurses and dieticians, our ability to staff our contact centers with healthcare professional, the enhanced adverse events monitoring and use of social media have enabled us to continue to grow our consumer affairs, patient recruitment business and provide adverse event reporting during product recalls for the protection of the consumer,” says the company’s co-founder , Kathleen A. McCarron.
“We are delighted to celebrate businesses like Academic Network that are playing a critical role to revitalize distressed urban communities throughout America,” said Michael Porter, founder and CEO of ICIC and Professor at Harvard Business School. “By creating jobs, income, and wealth for local residents, these high-growth businesses are vivid proof that the most effective way to address economic inequality in America is to equip every community to prosper in the market system. Inner City 100 companies also provide a window into the future where all companies will need to learn to address diverse customers and mobilize diverse workforces.”

2009 ICIC awardees were selected from over 5,000 nominations. Highlights:

• Inner City 100 companies are 34 percent minority-owned. Nationally, just 8 percent of companies with annual revenues over $1 million are minority-owned.
• The 2009 Inner City 100 companies are 18 percent owned by immigrants to the United States.
• 21 percent of the 2009 Inner City 100 are women-owned. Nationally, only 10 percent of companies with over $1 million in annual revenues are women-owned.
• The 2009 Inner City 100 boasts an average workforce that is 53 percent minority employees and 43 percent inner city residents.
• The 2009 Inner City 100 pay an average of over $15.00 per hour to hourly employees and $53,000 per year to salaried employees.

Academic Network provides optimal, most cost-effective means for distributing health-related product information to consumers and healthcare providers. Academic Network offers:

Contact Center Solutions: Call center, IVR, online and fulfillment
Clinical Trial Recruitment and Retention: Site support, Telecom and Online Screening
Quality and Regulatory Compliance: Adverse event reporting, recall customer care
Healthcare Operators: Medical, Nutritional, Health; Multilingual Expertise
Medical Advisory Boards: Internationally recognized experts
New Media Communications: Web 2.0, blogging, social media and online reputation monitoring expertise as well as web design and support services

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About Academic Network Academic Network, now a Stericycle Company is a leading medical and health communications company conceived by academic professionals to serve as a singular source for communicating health-related issues to consumers and health professionals. Academic Network works with leading pharmaceutical, food and beverage, and other Fortune 500 companies, as well as healthcare organizations, in developing effective communications strategies through consulting, telecommunications, internet and new media resources. Visit Academic Network at www.academicnetwork.com Please contact Claudia Johnson @Claudia Johnson.com, 503-799-2220 for more information

About the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City
The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) is a national not-for-profit organization founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter. ICIC’s mission is to promote economic prosperity in America’s inner cities through private sector engagement that leads to jobs, income and wealth creation for local residents. ICIC brings together business and civic leaders to drive innovation and action, transform thinking and accelerate inner city business growth and investment.

For more information about the 2009 Inner City 100 list, please contact Julia Ely at (617) 292-2383. The entire list can be found at www.icic.org.