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One of the easy things to do when discussing the products and services available on the market is to wax lyrical about the way the market is going, the best solutions that you can buy and the most cost effective results you can achieve. And in an extremely dynamic industry, such as IT, there is plenty to talk about. We all know that there are constantly evolving solutions

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

and a parade of suppliers who can provide them.

But rather than talk about the best technology, I think it would be useful just to swing the debate over to the issue of the Supplier. Recently one of our customers, 'The Firewall Warehouse' implemented a broadband VPN for it's 3 offices and centralised warehouse that are spread across the UK.

Nick Johnson, Director of The

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

Firewall Warehouse said, 'For the management team the technological argument and the financial benefit derived was not really an issue. Where we struggled was with our choice of supplier.'

Johnson went on, 'the problem was that we treated the sale as a commodity and didn't really respect the fact that connecting our business up and passing our vital data between sites was

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

, in reality, one of the most important things on our agenda. Sure, we understood it all, but we really should have made sure that we understood the product source, the delivery schedule, the time we needed to invest and the fact that those who provide you with critical solutions need to be close to you and your business.'

'As it so happens we ended up with a good deliver

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

y and a solution that is fast, robust, capable and secure, but only after we realised that we were not paying enough attention to the deal and consequently put our own management efforts into play, which incidentally was not that arduous.'

The lessons 'The Firewall Warehouse' learnt were that you need to do a bit of basic research yourself before kicking off the supplier

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

process.

The web is a fantastic source of information, as we all know and by searching 'VPN network' 'managed VPN', 'managed broadband', and a few other similar phrases, it is possible to become that much brighter and informed. But equally important is to understand what is behind the marketing web pages, what do the network providers actually do?

Now, even in the commod

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

ity sale, not all vendors offer the same product or service. For a start, don't ever believe that broadband is just broadband. It comes in various guises and is delivered with varying levels of quality and efficiency.

Some of the better known names do not necessarily offer you the best quality broadband and quite frankly the delivery and customer care capabilities are woe

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

fully inadequate for the small and medium sized business. So it's important to understand your vendors offering. What contention rates and speeds are on offer for a start? And if you can get into a discussion with a supplier about this you will find that one who has knowledge of the topic and an understanding of how best to network a business will really give you that adde

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

d comfort.

Additionally you need to know how good the service is and there are two issues that need some real clarity. The first of these is Reliability.

Now the answer to reliability is not just a simple claim of being reliable. What you need to be told is the structure of the network and an explanation of how they intend to provide you with the usual spiel about 99.999

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

999% guaranteed uptime. This revolves around how they have built their network and how they can demonstrate a lack of network congestion. The least reliable infrastructure will be the one that packs as many people as it can on to a limited network. Conversely, the better network is that which can cope with lots of traffic as well as having a lot of free capacity.

Which br

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

ngs up the second issue; namely that of Latency. This again needs explained to you by the supplier and they need to convince you that there is low latency on their network because they are being generous with the capacity and not overburdening their infrastructure with users. It's the same issue as that of reliability; less conscientious suppliers will push lots of traffic

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

across a smaller network, whereas more conscientious vendors will make sure that there is loads of capacity and will be able to talk confidently about their high reliability and low latency.

Whilst you are digging deep into the knowledge bank of your supplier you would also be well advised to talk to them about the provision of voice over the managed VPN. Voice can be ru

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

n across your broadband VPN, but not all suppliers really know how to do this or are capable of doing it. But be aware, this is something that is happening and will become more and more popular. Because of this a good supplier will be either encouraging you to run voice over your managed VPN now or setting your expectations to do it as part of your medium term planning.

B

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

ut knowing about the technology and how it applies to you is important, but equally so is their knowledge of process. So many times you can place orders and then be lost in a sea of promises. A good supplier will guide you as to what they will do, but also as to what you need to do. You don't need to spend hours on working with the supplier but you do need to be in synch w

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

ith their programme and understand what they are delivering, when they are delivering and basically when to flick the switch.

A good supplier will have a combination of automation and human resource. You should expect to be able to be given an online service to manage and indeed provision your service, but likewise you should know the service agent who is in charge of you

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

r project. Invariably you will have questions, date slippages, configuration changes and so on and you want that piece of mind that your supplier works with you to change the schedule and meet your demands. Do watch out for this because once you lose track of what you and they are doing it becomes an absolute muddle of spaghetti to unravel.

Other simple things to look out

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

for are the speed and simplicity of the supplier process. Automation of process invariably means that line orders are placed quickly, but you need to understand their acknowledgment process and update process so that you are comfortable with what information you expect to be fed to you over the order lifetime. Likewise you need to actually understand how the installation

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

takes place. It should be a speedy delivery of a box, a speedy delivery of a connection or connections and a harmonious bringing together of the items to create your managed VPN. If you can't see that nice clear plan from your supplier then be warned that it all might not be plain sailing.

So don't panic, but just be conscious of getting stuck in to some of the detail whe

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

n you are evaluating your supplier. This is absolutely not just about price. It's about their knowledge of how to create and run a project and it's about the network they use to provide it. It's also about how they efficiently supply you and appraise you along the way as well as their ability to persuade you of their business and technological integrity.

It's a fun thing

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

to be able to make your business better and I also think that your supplier will actually want to be part of that journey too. So do probe and ask questions about some of the issues raised and I'm sure you will find your choice of supplier to be much easier and fairly natural. Like most choices the most appropriate one is fairly obvious once you know which questions to ask

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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