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Hot spots for medical device software security I think that 2011 is going to be an exciting year for medical device security as the FDA gets more involved in the approval and clearance process with software-intensive medical device vendors. Considering how much data is exchanged between medical devices and customer service centers/care givers/primary clinical care teams and …

My guess is that the value of software patents is on the decline, taking value as the net of the economic upside of the software patent less the cost of  patent development, application and enforcement. The dynamic is that the benefit from patent protection in the software industry is less than the cost of the …

One of the biggest challenges in global multi-center clinical trials (after enrollment of patients) is collaboration between multi-center clinical trial teams: CRAs, investigators, regulatory, marketing, manufacturing, market research, data managers, statisticians and site administrators. In a complex global environment, pharma do not have control of computer platforms that local sites use – yet there is …

After a discussion with a client today about privacy and data security in social networking, I started looking at physician portals and came across a fascinating post from Dr. Scott Shreve – Knowledge Prostitution enabling Aggregated Voyeurism: Is this a Business Model? Voyeurism (voi-yûr’ ĭz‘əm) n. 1. The practice in which an individual derives pleasure from …

It just occurred to me – as our partner in Poland was getting ready to drive from Warsaw to Łęczyca for a sales call – that novel H1N1 (swine flu) and seasonal influenza is a great reason to use social media and Web conferencing for customer contacts, sales and support and reduce physical contact and …

Don’t ask me why, but I was invited (and joined) the Pakistan Networkers group on LinkedIn.  I see all kinds of cool job opportunities in the Emirates which I can’t really take but the traffic is interesting. I saw this picture in a post today from the Pakistan Networkers group. It graphically describes the complexity …

Counterfeiting is a hot issue not only because it hits vendors in the pocket but because of the public health/safety implications. Product counterfeiting ranges from fashion, such as Dolce & Gabbana handbags,  high performance bike frames such as Specialized Bikes to faking innovative drugs such as Viagra. The Israeli onlline business daily “The Marker” recently …

We had a discussion with a prospect for a DLP (data loss prevention) system) that started with discussing the pros and cons of various DLP solutions (Verdasys, Mcafee DLP, Websense, Fidelis Security) and finished with a drill-down into how they can build a business case to acquire and implement data security technology. After a very …

If you understand how pharmaceuticals are sold, this is not surprising. What is surprising is that a lot of people seem to think it’s just a question of time before pharmaceutical companies like GSK get into social media.  I claim that a fashion trend doesn’t make a business case. The buzz of social media and …

I was talking to some folks at a  big global pharma last week and I discovered that pharma doesn’t like social networking.    (Give me a break – I’m a software security guy, I think about these things in terms of threats to intellectual property and I thought everyone “gets” social networking). If you understand how …