Quantum² : InfoStars : Manuela Colombi

Manuela Colombi

(l-r) Roberto Morandi, Manuela Colombi and Ciaran Morton

Information specialists in the medical department at Janssen-Cilag SpA in Italy are inundated with requests from doctors and medical sales staff alike. As the manager of scientific documentation and pharmacovigilance service, Manuela Colombi coordinates all of the information procurement for Janssen-Cilag. “Sometimes we have to be magicians,” says Manuela, describing how they often take a small piece of information provided by the end user and find the most recent published article relevant to that data.

Last year, the library at Janssen-Cilag became virtual, giving internal users direct access to subscriber publications and pay-per-view access to publications to which Janssen-Cilag SpA does not subscribe. Usage is monitored to ensure that the “Web-library” is subscribing to frequently-accessed publications. Additionally, Manuela’s organization offers Alerts on corporate products, keeping employees up-to-date on company product news.

Manuela and her colleagues also train their internal customers on the value of specific publications and content sources, helping users to identify credible sources of medical and pharmaceutical information. Manuela believes that information is an instrument of power and that the education of good information professionals never ends.

”You must keep very up-to-date, reading journals and participating in workshops and conferences and keeping in touch with expert colleagues,” says Manuela.

As a veteran of the information industry, Manuela says she has seen the industry evolve over the last three decades. Keeping up-to-date on industry developments helps Manuela prepare for the next changes that will shape the role of the information professional.

“In the eighties, we saw the rise of the information specialist, and experienced the empowerment of the end-user in the nineties,” says Manuela. “I hope for a deeper understanding of the different roles and for stronger cooperation between them.”

Manuela Colombi works for Janssen-Cilag SpA, Italy, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. She is a member of the Gruppo Italiano Documentalisti dell’industria Farmaceutica e degli Istituti di Ricerca Biomedica (GIDIF, RBM) and the European Association of Health Information Libraries (EAHIL). She also is currently a board member of EAHIL, where she served as president from 1999-2000.