Key questions to be debated include:

1. If you can’t break through the traditional R&D model then how can you work around it to improve productivity?
   
   
2. What constitutes value – from the perspective of patient / physician / payer / shareholder / industry? What information does industry need to be able to communicate in order to demonstrate value to different stakeholders?
   
   
3. What methods are appropriate for quantifying risk? What’s the difference between relative and absolute risk? What’s the incentive for determining tiny values of risk?
   
   
4. What are the different business models and metrics to address productivity and generate value, particularly in the target discovery through to early PoC space?
   
   
5. Which types of human disease lend themselves to primary versus speciality care? How should biopharma balance the two?
   
   
6. How might industry collaboration be used to regain trust? Doing a better job of getting the message out on the realities of drug development and the commitment of industry scientists
   
   
7. Integrating the development of novel biological products into your business – how do you make the transition?
   
   
8. How to engage and collaborate effectively with academia - what is academia looking for from its pharma partner and how should pharma respond?
   
   
9. Developing world scientists will either become directly competitive or part of your vast army – which to choose?
   
   
10. What is the progress with early safety assessment tools, prior to doing first GLP tox studies?
    
    
11. Why does the pharma industry under-perform when benchmarked for innovation against other industries?
    
    
12. Which biotech business models will prove most attractive – both at research and clinical stages? In a sellers’ market for new product ideas, how involved should the biotech be in decision-making and commercialization?
    
    
13. How do you weigh up the benefit:risk of doing discovery and development in tried and tested areas versus off-shoring?
    
    
14. What tools can you use to test for additional indications and to build in greater differentiation pre-licensure?
    
    
15. What evidence is there of a ROI from translational medicine in terms of better decisions, better dose selection, earlier efficacy signals, better patient selections, and product differentiation?
    
    
16. When and how to integrate science and business? Tactics for seamlessly transitioning from one to the other
    
    
17. Do we have enough confidence in modelling and simulation data to use it for decision-making?
    
    
18. Is there any evidence that biopharma has realigned its business processes in light of the Critical Path Initiative – and with what objective/impact on the migration towards translational medicine?
    
    
19. Once you decentralize, how can you take advantage of still being big pharma?
    
    
20. What are the current limitations of leaders that prevent companies from doing the unexpected? Or are we just a highly conservative industry?

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