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If you want to become a better traveller, you can skip some of those how-to books penned by armchair road warriors

Instead, fire up your laptop computer and open Microsoft Outlook. Yes, I'm talking about that ever-present application that handles e-mail, scheduling and some word processing ta

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

sks.

Make the Most of Your Laptop

Odds are pretty good that you've got a copy of it installed on your laptop, and that you take your portable with you when you travel. (Regarding the latter point, a recent survey by Harris Interactive found that more than one in four laptop

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

C owners say their machine is one of their "most prized possessions," and nearly a third said they've regretted leaving it at home on trips and have turned around to retrieve it on at least one occasion.)

Outlook is to travellers what a paper clip is to MacGyver. It does a lot more

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

than you think. (My apologies to those who aren't familiar with television show which had its heyday in the 1980s and '90s.)

Using Scheduling Features for a Trip

Marielle Barnes, a consultant in Bangalore, India, counts on Outlook's scheduling features to make her trip fall

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

nto place. "I use the task manager to keep my 'to-do' list in order," she says. "I organise the tasks by city, and type of function, so that items get grouped and can be easily completed in a stretch." An alternative is keeping her itinerary on a calendar or a personal digi

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

al assistant. But if the laptop is coming along for the trip anyway, why not use what you've got (especially when it has a bigger screen than a PDA)?

Robert Hanson relies on Outlook and a third-party application called Xpressions to access his e-mails from a phone - a nifty feature if you hap

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

pen to leave your laptop at the hotel. "Outlook saved me from wasting money on a plane ticket by finding out the same day that I booked a non-refundable ticket that the meeting was supposed to attend was cancelled," says Hanson, from Wilmington, Del. "So I was able to cancel the

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

flight without penalty."

Outlook has bailed me out a few times, too.

My favourite feature is the contacts manager, which has rescued me more often than I'd care to admit. How's that? I usually print a full itinerary with phone numbers before I leave on a trip. (Call me old-fashioned, bu

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

t with a piece of paper you never have to worry about a low battery.) Being hopelessly absent-minded, that schedule has gone missing numerous times. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve the key addresses and phone numbers from Outlook rather than completely unpack my luggage in the middle of th

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

terminal.

A Traveler-Friendly Upgrade

To say that Outlook has been underappreciated by the jet set in the past might be an understatement. But that is changing. Microsoft Outlook 20

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

3 is designed even more with travellers in mind.

Here are a few of its handy features:

Find it faster. Outlook helps you make sense of all the e-mail you receive on the road. Its new Search Folders - "virtual" folders that contain views of all e-mail items

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

matching specific search criteria - let you quickly separate the important messages from the ones you want to ignore. Search Folders also flag priority messages first, so you don't waste time reading spam.

Keep junk mail out. Speaking of spam, the new Junk E-mail fold

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

r separates out most of your junk mail into a separate folder, helping to un-clutter your inbox.

Work without a Net. If you use an e-mail account through Microsoft

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

Exchange Server, you can work offline while you're out of the office or if your connection is too slow. Outlook only tries to connect to the server when you ask it to or when you choose to do so in the "Send/Receive" groups.

Mine your business contacts.<

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

strong> The new Business Contact Manager feature, which integrates with Outlook, turns your address book into a powerful tool that can create, track, and manage your business contacts, sales leads and opportunities. Perhaps the best thing about Business Contact Manager is that it's as intuitiv

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

as the old Outlook, so you don't have to spend hours reading a manual before you can use it. Cool "Feel" to Outlook 2003

Think of the latest version of Outlook

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

as MacGyver trading in his screwdriver for a power tool. Both gizmos worked fine, but somehow that drill just looks cooler. (Indeed, the new icons and "feel" of Outlook have my friends who use older versions or other e-mail systems drooling.)

But best of all, the Outlook 2003 with B

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

siness Contact Manager promises to make me more productive on the road.

As the publisher of a travel e-mail newsletter, I was particularly impressed with integrated features that allowed me to send personalised messages to designated contacts, with the help of List Builder. In an age when cli

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

ents are less likely to accept "I was travelling" as an excuse for missing deadlines, that's something that will probably help me keep the customers I have. And maybe find some new ones.

With Outlook 2003, the learning curve is steep on a few functions - I'm still trying to figure o

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

t how to get my navigation pane to do what I want it to, for example - and users of the old Outlook will have some adjusting to do.

But it won't take long to get the hang of it. And once you do, the new Outlook will become an even bigger reason (if you need one) to bring your laptop on a trip

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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