The Economic Climate

1
The Economic Climate

• Implications for libraries, librarians, and SLA
  (DPHT)

2
Current conditions

• US unemployment 8.1 may exceed 10
• 4.4MM jobs lost in February
• PHT membership down 22 since Feb 2007
• But
• Our industries are traditionally
  recession-proof now recession-resistant?
• Are current situations more influenced by
  recession or consolidation?
• Other factors FDA changes, new president

3
Macroeconomic HC view

• Healthcare / Pharma growth has slowed
• New administration is looking to limit costs
  pharma, devices, diagnostics may be slowed by
  competing priorities
• At the same time, FDA is scrutinizing
  applications more, increasing hurdles, including
  asking for better data increasing cost to
  development

4
Implications What were seeing

• Information Professionals
• Forced to do more with less
• Budget cuts
• Asked to broaden service
• ROI, ROI, ROI
• Consolidation effects
• Job cuts
• More users / combining different user groups
• Vendors
• Consolidation on this side as well uncertain
  effects
• Trying to deliver more value (continuing to
  innovate)

5
Opportunities IPs Vendors

• Information Professionals
• Improve sharing of industry news (layoffs, cuts)
• Use LinkedIn PHT group for flexible staffing
  needs
• Self-education on technology tools
• Be conscious of ways to be lean
• Information Broker?
• Vendors
• Enhance the Vendor IP partnership
• Help us prove ROI with better statistics
• Help us prove value through purchase
  consolidation

6
Opportunities - PHT

• Facilitate Vendor-IP discussions
• To help demonstrate IP value
• To help understand needs for different areas
  (e.g. by company size, interests)
• Advertise value of IP to smaller PHT companies
  (which likely lack IPs)
• Facilitate consulting using PHT members
• Reinforce IP value to larger PHT companies
• Encourage SLA corporate C-level communications
• Collect share supporting evidence for common
  concerns
• ROI
• Offshoring
• Continue surveys of our membership / clients (as
  in SLA Alignment)