The compliance consultants, Vectech, are now offering virtual cGMP consulting services, to help drug manufacturers deal with FDA compliance questions immediately via videoconferencing. The company is promoting this as a way to eliminate travel costs, yet ensure "face time." Costs are said to be a fraction of what traditional consulting runs. For more, read on.

A few days ago, I listened in on a webcast sponsored by WINA, the Wireless Industrial Networking Alliance, on “Choosing the Right Wireless Technology for Industrial Applications.” The main thrust of the webcast was to provide clarity around both ZigBee and Wireless HART standards for wireless usage in and around plants. It was a good, technical program if industrial wireless is your thing.

I don’t know about you, but the relentless drum beat of negative news has been getting to me lately.  Every day seems to bring news of some drastic four-figure layoff...er, restructuring, whether in pharma or other industries.

The University of Michigan announced that, after several months of secret negotiations, it will purchase Pfizer's Ann Arbor, Mich., research facility. Pfizer had planned on closing the facility by the end of 2008, and may have ended up razing the site rather than selling off the buildings piecemeal, so the university is clearly playing the role of white knight. What it gets is 30 buildings and 174 acres of top-notch research facilities into which it can expand, for a fraction of the cost, $108 million, that it would have to spend to create the facilities itself.