The Wednesday night of last week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, I was stricken with a bug. A terrible bug. A terrible stomach bug that threatened to eject all my insides outside: I felt like I was dying.
A few days later, a conference buddy of mine called:
“Did you get the J.P. Morgan plague this year? I didn’t see you in SF,” he said. I admitted I had – and he commiserated, saying it had struck him that very weekend.
Last year, I sat on a plane next to a fellow JPM warrior who wagered (between sneezes) that some 30 percent of attendees had fallen ill. It’s obviously an accurate number, because this guy had been going to the conference (hot zone) for a decade – and I think he knows a few epidemiologists.
It’s unavoidable: Lots of people get sick during the year’s premiere healthcare investment conference. With the congested hallways, the frenetic pace of meetings and mixers, the floppy appetizers, the fact that it’s January, the minimal air circulation, and little else to drink besides caffeinated or alcoholic beverages – it’s the perfect petri dish for an entire industry to fall ill.
Funny that it’s the pharmaceutical industry, though.
Here’s my thought:
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
- Chicken soup shooters.
- Pedialyte fountains.
- Cough syrup martinis. (Dextromethorphan could be fun at the cocktail parties, right?)
- Luncheons that serve just bananas, rice, applesauce and toast.
- The one-on-one partnering meetings are already held in the Westin’s hotel rooms. Keep the beds there, with perhaps some IV fluid stations.
- Roche should hand out Tamiflu in the welcome bags.
- GlaxoSmithKline should hand out Relenza in the welcome bags.
- J.P. Morgan-branded facemasks.
- To register, one must show photo ID, and proof of flu shot.
There is a sad irony that a healthcare-geared conference provides the perfect environment for pandemic. Joking aside, perhaps it’s time we improve conference conditions to promote the health of our healthcare industry.
Anyone else get the plague?
