Positive Prognosis for Schering-Plough

  Healthcare   Organizational Project Management   PM Network  

Under a six- to eight-year plan that kicked off in 2003, global sciences giant Schering-Plough Corp. is trying to transform itself into a new kind of health­care company—one that aims to be completely in tune with doctors, patients and other stake­holders in more than 120 countries. Gregory J. Szpunar, Ph.D., Schering-Plough Research Institute group vice president of global project manage­ment, is using project management best practices to achieve a healthy prospectus for growth.

Why does Schering-Plough invest in project management?

If you look at the statistics, there are very few drugs in discovery that make it out the other end. We probably have to come up with ideas for between 10 and 15 new drugs, put those into testing, to hopefully get one. It’s very risky and very time-sensitive. You want to move as quickly as you can, all the time, making sure you’ve got patient safety and efficacy at the forefront.

There are lots of diverse moving parts in getting a new drug to market. There are lots of internal and external customers—the physicians, the regulators, the companies that pay for peoples’ medical care. Really, it would be impossible to move programs forward without a pretty robust and mature project management infrastructure.

What are you working to improve in the project management process?

We’ve got…

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