J&J holds analyst meeting highlighting growth strategies for its Medical Devices and Diagnostics (MD&D) segment http://bit.ly/cdY11k

Webcast of presentations for J&J MD&D analyst meeting on J&J website http://bit.ly/gNVaT

MD&D day will highlight new products, including blood glucose monitoring/hernia repair systems, disposable contacts http://bit.ly/agrGrp

Gorsky, WW Chair, MD&D segment: can grow in underpenetrated mrkts thru intro of more advanced products/organic growth http://bit.ly/agrGrp

MD&D received more than 12 reg approvals so far in ’10, plans to make about 80 significant submissions between ’10-’12 http://bit.ly/agrGrp

MD&D segment continues to globalize current portfolios by developing more localized products for different markets http://bit.ly/agrGrp

Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc observed this increase in the number of health care professionals using mobile technologies and created the BLACKBAG™ iPhone Application, which gives physicians access to the latest medical information at their fingertips. Within the first two months of launching the app, BLACKBAG was downloaded by approximately 24,000 users.

The idea behind the BLACKBAG app was to provide physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and other health care professionals with easy access to resources and tools to help them stay informed; an electronic version of a doctor’s “black bag.” The app contains unbranded content across a number of medical areas and specialties. Health care professionals can subscribe to customized news feeds to receive breaking medical news, and access to journal summaries, conference coverage, videos and podcasts related to their areas of interest.

Here are a few screen shots from the BLACKBAG app:

BLACKBAG iPhone App

UPDATE: Since posting, there have been a few reviews of the app – here, here, here and here that are worth checking out.

It’s a great aspiration, and one that is well-suited to today’s information-powered world. As Paul explained:

Dr. Paul Stoffels, who is chairman of Pharmaceutical Research and Development at Johnson & Johnson, has been rather outspoken on this very subject – as discussed last week in the WSJ Health Blog and more recently in an opinion article in the Boston Globe.

Detailing his vision of the future based on innovation, Paul explained in the Globe piece that:

In addition to calling for collaborative innovation in the post-crisis world, aimed at economic recovery, Paul also explained the need for collaborative innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.

Through open innovation, he believes there will be an increase in intellectual entrepreneurship and novel collaborations across institutions and geographies. As he explained, this joint effort will then fuel the discovery of solutions to some of the world’s most critical healthcare challenges and meet unmet medical needs for patients worldwide.

UPDATE

In the Boston Globe editorial, Paul goes on to describe some examples of open innovation within the Johnson & Johnson familiy of companies:

As many of us here in the US brace for several days of bitter cold, which carries with it the risk of illness and injury, I’m reminded of the important role that global health research plays in improving people’s lives.

Whether it is the over-the-counter treatments taken to help alleviate the symptoms of the common cold, the prescription antibiotics taken to knock out a bacterial infection, or the hip and knee replacements that help restore mobility, most of us have no doubt benefited in some way from the byproducts of medical research.

Yet all too often we forget that people in some of the world’s poorest nations aren’t so fortunate and lack the information and options needed to treat some of the debilitating diseases that affect them. But now I hope to do something more to help raise awareness of this situation.

I recently had the honor of being named one of twenty five “ambassadors” selected by Research!America’s Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research to advocate for greater US investment in global health research. As part of effort, I’ll be joining some of our nation’s foremost health research experts in an effort to encourage a more robust national discussion on the value and importance of global health research.

Together with my fellow Ambassadors I hope to meet with policymakers and opinion leaders to advocate for increased US investment in global health research to fight the diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest nations.

It s quite invigorating to be in a group that includes some of the world’s foremost scientists, physicians and health care providers who specialize in critical areas, including neglected and emerging tropical diseases, TB and polio. I think, however, that our experiences at Johnson & Johnson provide a unique vantage point to advance health and well-being globally.

I hope to draw upon these experiences to advance global health diplomacy and to make suggestions to improve health literacy, to encourage prudent policy making and to help different regional leaders determine how best to approach the different health issues that impact their communities.

It’s a start — but hopefully by sharing innovative ideas together we can help advance health globally.

… and on surgical complications:

Experts will tell you that as women and now younger generations have entered the work force, work and family balance has become more of a priority for corporate workers. There is more focus than ever on these workplace issues, and the United States seems to be one of the most challenging environments for this type of balance. Now, it appears that the medical community may be joining this corporate trend and asking increasingly for more work and family balance in their lives.

This made me wonder, has the 24/7, medical “vocation” lost out to more family time and “vacation”? And, is that necessarily a bad thing? Shouldn’t medical personnel have the same privileges that are increasingly expected in other professions?

Jacob Goldstein wrote on this trend in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal and WSJ Healthcare Blog and tried to answer this question. His story and post illustrated how younger doctors’ quest for free time and balance is re-shaping medicine, building more team-based approaches and setting more regular hours. To be sure, there are pros and cons to this development and how it may re-define what constitutes quality care.

Louis Weinstein, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, however, summed it up well:

“I can promise you that I will be available for your delivery, but I have no idea how many hours I will have been up and … how many c-sections I will have done [since awakening] … Or, I can assure you that one of my colleagues will be fresh, will be available and will be focusing just on you. Which would you prefer?”

When my son was born last November, my wife and I had to adjust to this new world. The doctor who had delivered our first two daughters had taken on a new doctor to her practice and scaled back her own weekend hours to get more work and family balance in her life. It made perfect sense to me from a rational point of view, but not from the irrational father side of me who wanted the same trustworthy hands delivering baby No. 3.

Our doctors alternated weekends and off-hours. They both were familiar with my wife and had met with her on office visits. On the office trips I was able to make, as luck would have it, I always saw our old doctor and never met the new doctor until the night my wife went into labor.

I am not always comfortable with change, so my wife warned me to keep an open mind as she lay there in labor. She wasn’t worried at all. And, as you’d expect the new doctor was wonderful. She was attentive, reassuring, skillful and calmly handled the complications that came with our son’s delivery. I couldn’t have asked for anyone better.

Work and family balance … Just another way the world of health care is changing.

Earlier today, the Health Care Notification Network, or HCNN, which provides electronic alerts to US physicians, was launched. You can find out more about it here and here, but to really grasp the significance of HCNN, you have to keep in mind how US doctors currently hear about important safety information. Put quite simply, when this info needs to get out, for the most part it is printed and distributed via the postal service. However, through HCNN these alerts will be distributed via e-mail — which will surely be a more effective and efficient way to get the news out. (You can sign up for these alerts here…)

While news about HCNN is spreading, the role Johnson & Johnson played in all of this is not widely known.

My involvement with this project brought me in close contact with Christine Cote – who, while working for our Janssen Pharmaceutica business – came up with the idea of distributing these alerts electronically. Rather than me telling her tale, I thought you might be interested in Christine’s story in her own words…

Six years ago, when I was heading up medical affairs for our Janssen business, one weekend we had to put out an alert about the pain medicine Duragesic. In doing this, I was very surprised to learn how difficult it was to get the notification printed, stuffed in envelopes and out the door – a process further complicated by a snowstorm that blanketed the North East and shut down mail delivery.

If these alerts are really about ensuring patient safety – it occurred to me that they should be distributed much more quickly and efficiently – and why on earth are we not using an email system with receipts. Depending on the mail service is far from ideal. Delays, old addresses, lost letters and all that – plus the difficulties of ensuring that physicians have received the notifications is really not satisfactory.

Relying on a paper-driven system seemed strangely anachronistic given how most businesses had been transformed by e-mail and different online tools almost a decade earlier. With this in mind, I worked very closely with the IT experts at Johnson & Johnson’s specialist group called eJNJ, who then set to work to determine how to make electronic notification a reality.

They couldn’t do it on their own – and so they turned to Medem who then led the charge. Under the leadership of eJNJ, our Regulatory Group, Safety Group, Government Affairs and Communication Group worked with Medem to provide more detailed insight and specifications that would be required for a successful Safety Alert Notification System including meeting with the FDA. The result, after years of hard work by Medem and an unprecedented collaboration with the regulatory authorities, patient advocacy groups, industry and technology companies, is the HCNN. I am now working with Adrian Thomas, our Chief Safety Officer, and each operating company at Johnson & Johnson, to map out our transition from the paper based alert system to the HCNN electronic system. I am very proud that we have been able to take the lead on this initiative to substantially optimize the Product Patient Alerting System.

The work doesn’t end here. HCNN still has to get other companies to join in and there are hundreds of thousands of physicians who have to join the network. For some time, alerting physicians will include using both paper and electronic methods. But creating the network was a big hurdle to overcome. I suspect that once people see what this may mean for patient safety, I’m sure they will join in. And indeed, tens of thousands of physicians have already signed onto the network

One of the main things that struck me during and after my visit to Health 2.0 was the emphasis on the concept of consumers uploading their health data to various applications like Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault. Microsoft presented there, and Google did not, although Missy Krasner, Google’s Product Marketing Manager was inundated with “well wishers” and “very interested third parties!”

First Google Health Screenshots . It struck me as a huge privacy issue that people would be willing to upload their personal health data onto the web, but as Steve Case pointed out at the 7th Annual ePharma Summit in January, who would have thought 15 years ago, that people would not only be submitting their credit card data to on-line sites, but allowing them to store the details for added convenience! There was also a lot of discussion of sites targeting their content (and advertising) to specific types of patients and disease states, which would also involve healthcare consumers revealing personal data, or at least interests.

Probably what impresses me more is the growing importance and influence of user-generated sites and content by patients themselves, with specific medical issues and conditions. Amy Tenderich’s excellent site, Diabetes Mine – the all things diabetes blog, is a great example of this. As is Matthew Zachary’s I’m too Young For This! : A Place For Young Adults Affected By Cancer . These patients have become a great source of comfort, resources and knowledge, in their particular areas or expertisE.

Finally, being a videophile, I am continually impressed by the proliferation of quality media available on sites like WebMD , as well as a less well-known, but excellent site for healthcare video, icyou (Disclaimer: Johnson & Johnson has placed a limited amount of video material on icyou.com.)