Today’s post is a shameless and sincere push for you, your companies and your clients to invest at least 45 minutes to learn about one of the smartest companies in the world, and how it can provide major, major assistance to understanding the opportunities and risks arising for businesses due to the ongoing revolution in molecular science as to diseases and causation. Specifically, Praedicat is far ahead of any other entity in the world when it comes to “looking around corners” to foresee “the next asbestos.” In fact, Praedicat already has seen and defined material risks from particular chemicals. Its systems and people also have knocked down faux risks. They blew me away some years ago when I was granted a sneak peek into some of the incredible work of this spin-off from RAND. Then, in 2014, Praedicat moved out of “stealth mode,” and I was given permission to write a public post about Praedicat’s work, which includes harnessing the knowledge of 22 million medical articles. Since then, Praedicat and the knowledge have improved and expanded. The further changes over the next few years will arrive at a pace and scale never before seen.
A July 7 webinar provides a first opportunity for you to see the results of years of incredible but quiet work by Praedicat’s multi-disciplinary team. Praedicat has organized, understand and made useable the world’s medical literature (and more) for the good of companies, their customers and the end users of products. The key is the scientific knowledge tools they’ve compiled – and integrated – through multi-disciplinary thinking. No one else in the world can provide anything even close in substance or in speed. Interested? I hope so. Register here; there’s no fee. How to use Praedicat’s knowledge? There are many ways, including for M&A and investment risk analysis. But, in my view, Praedicat’s systems should be snapped up by corporate directors and officers seeking to fulfill Caremark duties and to avoid the catastrophic human agony and financial costs vividly illustrated by the tens of thousands killed and the billions lost during 45+ years of asbestos claiming after more decades of use. Hopefully manufacturers and premises owners (among others) will put Praedicat’s systems to work to design (or redesign) products, production systems and industrial processes to achieve real safety and earn larger profits with less risk.
Does all of this really matter? Yes. Need proof? Try giving a fresh read to the Caremark opinion on the duties of Delaware directors to put in place systems and processes to identify risks to the corporation. There, Chancellor Allen explained: “relevant and timely information is an essential predicate for satisfaction of the board’s supervisory and monitoring role under s 141 of the DGCL.” With those principles in mind, think about the record (or lack of a record) in your organization as to staying abreast of the incredible pace of scientific knowledge as to causes of diseases. Need more evidence? Think about product liability claims and state of the art science. Many courts “follow a rule that holds a manufacturer to the skill and knowledge of an expert within its particular field of business; this, in turn, requires the manufacturer to keep abreast of scientific discoveries relevant to that field.” See Scott P. Kennedy, WHO KNEW? REFINING THE “KNOWABILITY”STANDARD FOR THE FUTURE OF POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS TECHNOLOGIES,9 WASH J.L. TECH. & ARTS 267 (2014) http://digital.lib.washington.edu/dspace-law/handle/1773.1/1340 (analyzing legal rules in the context of new understandings of the impacts of tasers on the human body). Now that Praedicat is in place, the “black swan” thought/defense becomes more tenuous.
Still need more? Read about the new TSCA statute in general. Then learn about its implications for businesses, as to both opportunities and risks. Then think about the implications of Praedicat’s knowledge and tools for 1) corporate compliance with TSCA and 2) building a business strategy that respects and builds new opportunities from new scientific knowledge. A take away? It’s well worth investing 45 minutes in the webinar to learn a great deal about “seeing around corners” to avoid “the next asbestos.” The “next asbestos” will happen if people fail to act. Just look at the spectacular verdicts and new claim filings related to suits about talc and ovarian cancer. Then think about the reality that there are 22,000+ ovarian cancers each year in the US, in contrast to perhaps 3,200 mesotheliomas.
Set out below are further specifics from Praedicat: “Please join us on Thursday, July 7, from 11:15 am Pacific/2:15 Eastern to 12:00 noon Pacific/3:00 pm Eastern time, for a FREE webinar:
How to use big data and technology as your early warning system for monitoring science on the chemicals, products and processes that your company makes and uses: an introduction to Praedicat
Staying on top of scientific research on the chemicals, products and processes that your company makes and uses (such as plasticizers BPA or DEHP, food ingredient diacetyl, flame retardants decaBDE or HBCD, or carbon nanotubes) would involve reading through, and digesting, and synthesizing, and staying up to date with an ever-growing library of millions of scientific papers published in thousands of scientific journals. And even then, the bulk of these papers aren’t focused on analysis of the science supporting causation. So relying on these sources raises the additional challenge of finding a scalable solution to extract signals from the noise.
Given all these challenges, how can you find objective information to help with risk management, research & development, product stewardship, regulatory affairs, scientific affairs, public relations and reputation management?
Praedicat’s Vice President of Global Client Development, Fred Kipperman, will provide a demo of CoMeta™, an analytics tool that can provide you with an objective view of the scientific literature on an emerging risk. Rather than reading articles one by one, you can use CoMeta’s meta-analysis to get a view of the big picture conveyed by the relevant science. You can also use CoMeta to forecast trends, to understand the most important exposure settings, and to review the most important scientific papers.
Fred will also provide an overview of Praedicat’s patent-pending methods – based on research originally conducted at the RAND Corporation and developed in multi-year partnerships with top global casualty insurance carriers – for collecting and assessing scientific literature to evaluate risk.
CoMeta was originally developed for and—until now—has been used exclusively by casualty underwriters and risk managers at the top liability insurance carriers in the world. They need to stay up to date with the fast moving scientific literature on bodily injury and property damage and they use CoMeta to do it.
Until recently, CoMeta was only available to top insurance carriers, and those insurance carriers were the only ones who could go beyond reading individual scientific articles and take advantage of CoMeta’s analysis of the worldwide scientific community’s 26,000,000 peer-reviewed articles, and meta-analysis of 1000s of scientific literatures about chemicals, products and substances in order to provide a systematic and objective perspective.
But now you have the opportunity to use CoMeta to get objective, unbiased information to inform your strategy in:
· risk management,
· research & development,
· product stewardship,
· regulatory affairs,
· scientific affairs, and
· public relations and reputation management.
We are also pleased to announce that Anna Pierce, Manager of EHS and Enterprise Risk Initiatives at General Electric will also join to offer her thoughts how GE is “looking around the corner” using CoMeta assessments of science relevant to its business.
During this webinar, Fred will provide a case study: using CoMeta to evaluate the science behind carbon nanotubes. Depending on which headlines you read, carbon nanotubes are either a “revolutionary” material set to transform everything from microchips to tennis rackets to airplanes, or, on the other hand, the “the next asbestos” that is going to result in a tidal wave of bodily injury lawsuits if it is not heavily regulated or banned. Fred will show you how CoMeta cuts through the noise, and gives you an objective picture of the risks of carbon nanotubes. Fred will also review how you can use these same techniques to evaluate dozens of other emerging risks.
We plan on covering a lot of ground, as well as answering as many of the questions submitted prior to the webinar as possible.
Details
Thursday,
2016 July 7
11:15 am – 12:00 noon U.S. Pacific Time
2:15 pm – 3:00 pm U.S Eastern Time
To Register
Click here to register for this free webinar.
Please tell your friends
Feel free to forward this invitation to all your friends, colleagues and peers who want to be more effective in risk management, research & development, product stewardship, regulatory affairs, scientific affairs, public relations or reputation management.
We’d love to have them join us.
Please submit your questions
Given the large number of attendees expected, we won’t be able to take questions over the phone. However, you will be able to submit written questions to the moderator during the webinar. Also, if there are particular questions you would like Fred to answer or particular topics you would like him to address, please submit them on the registration form. You can also email your questions to us at CS@praedicat.com (or just reply to this email).
We look forward to talking with you on Thursday, July 7 from 11:15 am Pacific/2:15 pm Eastern to 12:00 noon Pacific/3:00 pm Eastern time.
And as always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us at any time by replying to this email, emailing us at CS@praedicat.com, or calling Customer Support at +1.424.672.8999.
We’d love to hear from you.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5760 West Jefferson Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
(p) 424.672.8999
(f) 310.853.7160
CS@praedicat.com
www.praedicat.com