PDA Letter Article

Learning from the Past in A Patient-Centric World

by Jason Kerr

Jason Kerr

During the pandemic, the biopharmaceutical industry had to make fast-paced decisions in physically distant environments to ensure that patient-centric products and solutions were still successfully delivered. Collectively, the industry collaborated with regulators to request and issue emergency use authorizations for life-saving therapeutics, uploaded entire workforces into the virtual world, wrote guidance documents and FAQs to ensure alignment, and pivoted many clinical trials toward vaccine development. As our industry enters a new era, we have a unique opportunity to not only reflect on the decisions and their outcomes that were made during those unprecedented times but to now aggressively pursue methods to meet the challenges we know are ahead. The best opportunity to receive this information is in April through the 3rd and 5th at the 2023 PDA Annual Conference in New Orleans, where you and your peers will continue to learn from the past while focusing on a patient-centric world.

As science and technology advance, one exciting area of interest is novel approaches and methods to attack disease states. However, trying to move through the typical industry phases of investigation to regulatory approval and ultimately getting to the patient with these new developments can be challenging, to say the least. Luckily, at Tuesday’s opening plenary, Hari Pujar, Ph.D., from Flagship Pioneering, and Don Healy, Ph.D., from Adicet Bio, will be sharing their companies’ stories of how they are pushing the boundaries of what is possible while accelerating the development of new drugs and paving their own paths. This urgent session will provide a glimpse of how these companies are advancing advanced therapy medicinal products into the future and how your company can too.

Now, while our industry is rapidly advancing, we all continue to be tasked with doing more with less. One approach to maximizing resources is to digitize everything. The digitization of data can allow a company to become more agile by linking disconnected databases in a centralized and standardized way to enable a systematic review of data. Moreover, while digitization has multitudes of benefits, it also increases cybersecurity risks, which are at an all-time high. If expanding digitization safely and securely is as imperative to your organization as it is to your competitors, you cannot afford to miss the multiple sessions being offered on these topics at the 2023 PDA Annual Conference.

With all eyes looking forward, the entire PDA community is also heavily focused on the future of our industry, which lies in the hands of our early career professionals (ECPs). Therefore, it is critical that, as an industry, we learn how to authentically engage with ECPs. What are their concerns? What resources do we need to develop to help them succeed? Are we even asking the right questions? The 2023 PDA Annual Conference has the solution with a brand new ECP-only panel session.

Ultimately, all those attending the conference have a shared goal – to deliver quality drugs and products for the care of patients. Our industry holds this duty sacred, and we will reflect on both our successes and shortcomings during an eye-opening plenary featuring presenters from the EveryLife Foundation for Rare Diseases. This session will illustrate the national economic burden of rare diseases and the foundation’s plans to overcome the economic challenges. It is then up to us, in the industry, to decide if we are up to the challenge to join in the crusade to help alleviate this burden, all while creating a better quality of life for those in the rare disease community. Finally, this session will remind you why you are in this industry and why the significance of your work matters in this fight.

With three jam-packed days of education and networking events, the 2023 PDA Annual Conference is the only place to connect you with your peers, get reinvigorated and kick off the second quarter of the new year. There will be no shortage of innovative ideas, concepts, case studies and solutions to your most pressing problems. The only thing missing is you, so register today! See you in New Orleans!