Main Subject - Internet and Businesses Online

For years, EZBoard was a community that offered relatively cheap and easy to maintain forums for managers. Virtually anyone could register, design, and layout a site and invite their friends to participate. Indeed, some of the largest forums on the internet are

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

built upon EZBoard. Unfortunately, a recent system-wide hacking attack has destroyed the company's reputation and sent many managers packing. Let's look at the venerable community and the fatal flaw that has toppled the company from its perch.

At one time EZB

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

Examples of combination products may in

ard boasted over 14,000 web communities. Many were started by individuals seeking a discussion forum for their favorite topics, while others were started by business people such as myself. The reasons businesses were attracted to EZBoard were two-fold:

1. We w

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

re not knowledgeable enough about PHP to create and manage a site for ourselves, and

2. We did not want to go through the expense of hosting our site on a dedicated server and, instead, used EZBoard's vast bank of computers to house our communities.

Admittedl

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

, reason #1 was a huge part of why I stuck with EZBoard. Sure, I knew about vBulletin and related forums but purchasing a license from them and managing the site on a dedicated server was a pricey option, especially since at one time I was managing more than a

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

Combination pro

ozen forums! I could handle the variable charges incurred from being with EZBoard by paying my subscription charges on either a quarterly, semi-annually or even yearly basis. I doubt that I dished out more than $500-600 in any given year, so it was cost effecti

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

ve for my business.

I should have known that EZBoard was not quite up to the task when their system shut down for several days in Spring 2004 after what was supposed to be a simple system-wide update of the forums. A few hours of down time was extended to sev

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

ral days and forum administrators were left in the dark for all of that time. More importantly, many forum members assumed the worst and peppered many an administrator's inbox with queries. Those days were not fun; EZBoard did recover and gave managers credits

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

xceeding the number of days they were down. Still, if you relied on AdSense revenue -- like I do -- you lost big time.

History was to repeat itself on May 30, 2005, when a reported outside attack by hackers brought down EZBoard altogether. Yes, the boards were

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

still working, but the majority of messages were gone and any new ones also began to disappear. EZBoard admitted almost immediately they were hacked and were working diligently to restore the 9000 boards affected. Soon, however, the news came out that much of t

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

eir backup files were hacked as well. Forum managers wondered if EZBoard kept all their files on vulnerable servers or if the attack was done internally. Messages from EZBoard management were vague "in the interest of security" so nobody knew for sure.

As the

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

Following aspects would a

days passed and forum managers realized that the restoral process would only be partial and take weeks to accomplish, a steady stream of managers began to hit the php sites to see about moving their boards. With trepidation I visited the PHPBB2 site knowing tha

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

my skillsets were limited in this area. However, I soon learned that this particular program was open source -- in effect, free -- and the Flash tutorials explained everything clearly and effectively. So, in one evening I set up the new site, transferred some

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

iles, and gave it a launch.

The best part? In the two years since I was with EZBoard my hosting company for web pages had upgraded their site enough to be able to house my message boards. So, instead of having web pages on one server and my forums on another,

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

could house them collectively. Most importantly, I would no longer have to rely on EZBoard's flawed backup plans and could backup all the files myself.

I still have one EZBoard community and I may keep it, for now. It is a small, but very well established wh

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

re it is "sitting" and I lost only 4 or 5 files under the attack. Two of my sites I transferred to PHP and two others I decided to delete as they were slower performers. Fortunately, I had gotten rid of several smaller, no performing sites earlier. Still, I fel

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

t the pain of EZBoard's hacking incident and decided the time to move was now.

So, what is the future of EZBoard? That is hard to tell. They are promising a major upgrade which would include the ability allowing managers to back up their own sites. That would

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

e a very good move. However, the administrative costs with EZBoard now exceed what managers pay with many standard web hosting companies. Few sites are large enough to require a dedicated server, therefore many managers will likely consider making the move away

.

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

I was twice bitten from EZBoard and did not relish a third hit, thus my two largest sites are now with PHPBB2. The move was time consuming, but the new board has many more advanced features compared to EZBoard. Sure, I have more administrative things to do --

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

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

like help AOL users who have difficulty signing up -- but I no longer am subject to the whims of EZBoard. I am glad that a major risk factor has been removed even with the increased administrative responsibilities. You will be too if you decide to make the move

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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