As a university based center of expertise on the pharmaceutical industry, POPI offers courses and seminars aimed at the MIT community, as well as meetings and symposia targeted to the pharmaceutical industry and those who regulate it or use its products and services.
At MIT, POPI educates scholars at the doctoral level who develop expertise on the industry and then convey knowledge to other universities and students. We also educate students at master's and bachelor's degree levels, to transfer information and competence that these graduates can take to their employment in the pharmaceutical industry. For those who work in industry, we have devoted considerable effort to organizing educational offerings for those pursuing professional, scientific, or technical careers in pharmaceutical firms or elsewhere within the industry's infrastructure.
In the five years since POPI's founding, our faculty and students have presented our work or exchanged ideas through participation in meetings organized by firms, trade organizations, professional societies, and other universities, and have testified before government agencies and legislative bodies. Many POPI faculty are regularly contacted by the news media for their perspectives on a host of issues facing the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare sector in general. These invitations and press contacts speak to the widening view-beyond MIT-of POPI as a center of expertise on the pharmaceutical industry.
Since POPI's founding, we have offered a number of subjects as part of MIT's regular academic catalogue. Those courses that predate POPI have been strengthened as a result of our participation. We also have developed and offered a successful on-campus summer executive program for physicians, scientists, and engineers working in or with the pharmaceutical industry.
This seminar has been offered continually in the fall semester since 1991, bringing together graduate and undergraduate students in management, chemical engineering, and biology with leading academics from MIT and other universities. A large number of invited guests from industry also have participated. Typical attendance at the weekly meetings has been forty to forty-five people. The course content includes a mix of presentations of research by POPI faculty and the work of outside academics, coupled with the experiences of industry guests. This seminar has been evaluated very favorably by attendees, and has served as the point of entry through which students begin to engage in POPI activities.
Students taking this seminar for credit have prepared nearly one hundred papers addressing industry issues. Some of the work done by students in the fall 1995 class led to the following paper topics.
A number of new faculty-led POPI research projects began as exploratory student papers or projects as part of this class. Faculty and students continue to benefit significantly from such interaction.
This seminar, offered since the early 1980s, was restructured in 1991 to focus on the pharmaceutical industry. After several weeks of presentations from multidisciplinary faculty, teams of students focus their efforts on solving specific problems similar to those actually faced by individuals working in the industry. Industry guests attend to offer their perspectives on the scope and definitions of industry problems, and return later in the seminar to critique the solutions developed by students.
Typical enrollment has been ten to fifteen doctoral or master's degree students in management science or engineering, most of whom have already attended the Seminar on Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry Management. This offering also has been favorably evaluated, and some participants have gone on to select graduate theses related to POPI faculty research.
This course, developed by three POPI faculty, was first offered in the spring of 1994. It is the core of the Sloan School's offerings in the healthcare area. Presented in a lecture/discussion format, the course integrates the burgeoning multidisciplinary academic literatures on the healthcare industry with the practical perspectives of those who have worked in the pharmaceutical or medical device industries. Some twenty-five management and engineering graduate students take this course each year.
This academic subject is offered in the Applied Economics Center of the Sloan School. Since 1992, one-third of each semester has been devoted to addressing-in economic terms-strategic issues facing the pharmaceutical industry. Thirty-five student enrollees per year have interacted with guests from major research-based and generic drug firms, government regulatory agencies, and legislative staff.
This special summer executive program has been offered on campus each June since 1992. Enrollees-typically some thirty individuals from pharmaceutical firms and government worldwide-are exposed to the research and insights of POPI faculty and to abbreviated versions of excerpts of our regular academic subjects. This course has been evaluated favorably by the attendees and has formed the basis for new relationships between POPI faculty and students and those who work in the industry.
Two years ago, Thomas Allen, Charles Cooney, and Stan Finkelstein began to offer an abbreviated version of the summer executive program offsite. The first offering was in Barcelona, Spain, in June 1994, in conjunction with the Institut Químic de Sarrià, a Spanish university. This session was followed up by a one-day meeting on pharmaceutical economics in October 1995. A similar off-campus executive program is planned for Tel Aviv, Israel in the fall of 1996.
POPI has held two symposia in the past-both very successful-and future plans call for similar gatherings every other year. Topics for these meetings are chosen to relate ongoing POPI research to major challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry.
In November 1995, POPI sponsored a symposium at MIT aimed broadly at those in industry and government worldwide with interests in pharmaceutical issues. The format of the symposium-The Pharmaceutical Industry in the 21st Century-incorporated major POPI research projects.
This day-and-a-half-long briefing for senior corporate and technical executives focused on growth, change, and opportunity in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. The program was organized into three sections. In "The State of the Industry," POPI researchers discussed emerging industry trends, the changing dynamics of competition, and issues related to the manufacture of pharmaceuticals. In the second section, "Drug Development and the Changing Face of R&D," investment, project management, and productivity issues were discussed. In the third section, "Linking Business Strategy to the Changing Marketplace," research findings related to the economics of a new pharmaceutical marketplace were presented, as were findings on new methods to evaluate pharmaceutical cost-effectiveness in the workplace. Finally, a panel of distinguished experts explored key changes that lie ahead for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the areas of R&D, drug development, and new technology and profitability.
Two hundred individuals, principally senior executives from pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms attended the symposium. An advisory group is being formed from among those who attended; this group will provide informal guidance to POPI as we plan future symposia. (A detailed program of the symposium, as well as a list of organizations represented at the meeting by attendees, appears in Appendix E.)
Since POPI's inception, a number of the faculty and several students have had the opportunity to make invited presentations to seminars or meetings organized by pharmaceutical firms, trade associations, or professional societies. Several faculty have served on distinguished panels or as invited experts providing testimony to legislative bodies.
The following is a partial list of firms and organizations that have recently hosted POPI researchers as visitors or guest speakers.
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