If you’ve ever missed a connection because of a delayed flight, or been stuck in traffic for hours, you understand one of my biggest pet peeves: inefficient use of time.
Because we – and our clients – are spread around the world, we use a variety of tools to keep us productive and efficient from virtually any location. These tools allow us to work remotely and sometimes they even eliminate the need for commuting or travel.
Some tools that we use include:
- Skype: Great for making international calls from a cell phone (as long as you have an internet connection – look for free WIFI when traveling) and for videoconferencing from a Mac or PC. Macs also have videoconferencing capability (iChat) built into the operating system.
- Web-based conferencing solutions: Including WebEx, GoToMeeting, Fuze and Onconference, to name a few. Of these only WebEx has video capability. Warning: Just because these tools help make meetings virtual, doesn’t mean they can’t still be derailed by a lack of group focus.
- Web-based project management tools (We use Basecamp): Basecamp serves as a virtual project hub to keep track of documents that require input from multiple team members. It’s a great resource for version control.
- Online contact management tools (our favorite is Highrise): Online contact management is useful if more than one person on a team is interacting with a contact. These tools provide a way to capture notes and dates from phone calls and meetings so that others on the team stay current.
- Dropbox: A free cloud storage service (though heavy users may need to upgrade to a paid license), Dropbox is an easy way to access a file from multiple devices (laptop, smartphone, iPad). It is also a great way to share very large documents that cannot be emailed. Simply copy a file to your Dropbox folder, send a link to that file, and the recipient clicks the link to download the file.
- Penultimate and Note Taker HD: The need for paper has been greatly reduced thanks to email but note taking in meetings is often still a paper-based task, unless you have an iPad – in which case you have options. These two apps allow you to write on your iPad using a stylus or finger and then email the notes. Note Taker is the more feature rich of the two, but requires a little effort to learn whereas the simpler Penultimate sports a more intuitive interface.
- Quickbooks Connect: For invoicing clients from the road there are a number of web-based solutions that also offer a mobile app. We use the Quickbooks Connect iPhone app to access our Quickbooks data, but there are many others that offer varying degrees of both accounting tasks and connectivity options. The choice of small business accounting software can be a daunting task and one that you may want to ask your accountant or financial advisor about.
What is your experience with streamlining your workplace environment with technology? Has an agile, cloud-based technology ever come in to save or increase your productivity in a pinch? Share your tech solutions with us here.
Tags: cloud computing, efficiency, Ken Walz, productivity, technology, tools, working remotely
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As one of the nearly 8,500 attendees at this year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, I’m not alone in recording my observations. However, while the crowds and the climate are still fresh in my mind, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to share some of my key takeaways. If you were there, please feel free to add your thoughts to the comments section. If you weren’t, let me know if you have any questions about a point I’ve made or curiosity you had about the conference that I haven’t covered.
Also, whether you attended or not, you may want to check out the ruminations of TheStreet.com’s Adam Feuerstein who blogged “live” from the conference as well as In Vivo’s Blog on the subject and the prose of the IR Report’s Dominic Jones.
My observations:
- Fire codes be damned: Attendance was up significantly from last year with the number of registrants approaching 8,500 compared to closer to 7,200 last year. It is difficult to imagine that the Westin could accommodate any more people, yet apparently there is unyielding resistance to a change of venue. I think this is a case where tradition trumps fire code.
- Optimism prevailed: Or, more to the point, everyone we talked to expressed their opinions that “there seems to be a greater sense of optimism.” To the extent that economics is, in large, a measure of a function of human behavior, this “sense of optimism” may be good enough to get things moving in the right direction again.
- Realism in Health IT: Among the health IT companies, I noted a sense of realism. Some executives in this space acknowledged that the federal stimulus funding directed to their industry – rather than the must-have nature of their products – may be a primary reason for the growing interest in that space.
- mHealth wasn’t in the house: One thing that we did not see or hear much about was mobile health, probably reflecting the public company nature of this event. Most of the activity in the mHealth space is dominated by privates or large publics for whom mHealth is a tiny piece of their life science business.
- Moving systems closer to point of care: Part of the mHealth story is increasing efficiency, often at the patient or consumer level. Efficiency was a feature mentioned by several instrument companies looking for ways to move systems closer to point of care.
- Social networks playing a role in wellness: Finally, though the conference was largely dominated by pharmaceuticals, devices, and research tools, there seemed to be an uptick in the number of mentions of wellness and the role of healthy behaviors and decisions in preventing disease and illness. The power of social networks to effect behavioral change is clearly a part of this mix.
Tags: 2011, conferences, Health Care, J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Ken Walz, life sciences, mHealth, Pharmaceuticals
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When it comes to the life science industry, many have made 2011 predictions, including renowned biotech specialist, venture capitalist, and frequent public speaker Steve Burrill. It’s not all that surprising that he envisions much of what will happen in the year ahead will be based upon an environment that favors risk-mitigated companies, emerging biotechnology markets (e.g., Brazil and China), and challenges due to U.S. healthcare reform.
While I encourage you to take a look at his full list of predictions, I’m most interested in those that tie to some of the topics we’ve been discussing since we launched this blog in November, especially with regard to converging technologies.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: biotech, converging technologies, Health care predictions 2011, iPhone, Ken Walz, life sciences, mHealth, Steve Burrill
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