Quantum² : InfoStars : Christine Cameron

Christine Cameron

Chiron's Christine Cameron (center), with Jason Leadley (L) and Ciaran Morton (R)

Information professional Christine Cameron identifies herself as an agent of change, promoting innovation throughout the information industry. Christine strives to redefine the role of the information professional by executing new strategies and improving information access. It is her dynamic approach that has earned Christine the title of Quantum² InfoStar.

As the European Medical Information Manager in the Haematology Business Unit (HBU) of Novo Nordisk, Christine used her proactive philosophy to change the way the company conducted research. She joined Novo Nordisk in March 2003 to set up a medical information service within the HBU. Leveraging the enquiry management system used at Novo Nordisk's main office in England, Christine established a similar service in the HBU in Crawley, England. This enabled her group to share the customer service team, which took most of the first-line calls in the United Kingdom.

Following her success with the enquiry management system, Christine then set up a monthly alerting system for new publications. With Christine as the only person in her department at the time, she needed an electronic solution that would require minimal maintenance from her. Working with her Dialog sales representative, Jason Leadley, Christine set up monthly alerts, which she could then redistribute to Novo Nordisk's medical teams in Europe. Christine credits her partnership with Dialog in helping to serve her customers.

“If it hadn't been for the services available via Thomson Dialog, I would not have been able to set up and improve our informational provision with the HBU,” said Christine.

She and Jason then worked to purchase licenses for MEDLINE®, EMBASE® and BIOSIS®, and followed that up by implementing a PrivateStar (PRIV) database for Novo Nordisk. The private database contains all records relevant to the company's drug, which supports most of the internal requests for literature searches.

Christine's influence in the pharmaceutical information sector is extensive. Prior to her joining Novo Nordisk, Christine held departmental head positions at Serono and Elan. She also is a past president (1998-2002) of the Association of Information Officers in the Pharmaceutical Industry (AIOPI) in the U.K. AIOPI recently changed its name to the Pharmaceutical Information & Pharmacovigilance Association (PIPA).

Christine now works at Chiron Biopharmaceuticals in Cowley, England.