Pharma Strategy Blog

Today marks the kick off for one of my favourite conferences on the oncology-hematology calendar, with the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) being held in Chicago.  It’s all about the science and basic research here, although there are clinical sessions, usually on strategy and early emerging phase I/II data.

Wifi is usually pretty good at the AACR annual meeting, although it can be more variable at the smaller meetings.  Like many attendees, wifi permitting, I’ll be tweeting from the conference and blogging some of the interesting highlights over the next few days.

For those interested, you can follow the Twitter chatter using the conference hashtag #aacr from attendees and non-attendees alike, by clicking on the widget below:

AACR have a strong web and social media presence as well as webcasts of sessions (some free, some paid), thanks to the sterling efforts of Ron Vitale and his web team, who do a fantastic job.

They also have iPad/iPhone or Android apps for those interested in looking at the program on the go and an abstract app as well.  After all, what use is a CD-rom of the abstracts if you’re running around McCormick place with a mobile device?  These days, most conferences, I don’t even take a laptop anymore, so a CD is pretty useless with an iPad or tablet!

One of my favourite tools last year was the video app, which offers selections of short interview of some of the presenters giving the highlights of their talks or findings.  This is a great idea for getting key points out on topics of interest.

Huge doorstop abstract/reference books, CD-Roms and flash keys/memory sticks will soon be a thing of the past.  I confess to being a huge big fan of reading the program as a PDF, so that it can be easily read and bookmarked in iBooks, on a plane, bus, or while running round the poster halls.

All of these digital tools are much more practical and user-friendly – tailored towards the typical on-the-go use by attendees and I sincerely wish more conferences would follow AACR’s lead and move over to the web 2.0 world in this fashion.

The conference runs through Wednesday, so do check back daily for the Twitter updates and we’ll be blogging anything interesting either here on PSB (follow @maverickny) or on Biotech Strategy Blog (follow Pieter Droppert, @3NT).