Fearless pharma blogger Maxine Vaccine prepares for her new job with a trip to Matalan, the Body Shop and the online NHS.

Yes, it’s true. After the Bank Holiday I’m starting a new job. Those lovely people at Pharmajobs helped me look for the right role, employer and region, put me in touch with specialist agencies and companies that matched my aspirations and talents. And then my line manager at Munchkin Pharma said “Would you like a new role?”

She explained about key account management. No more sales pitch blues, no more marketing message Mondays, no more NLP courses, no more free samples. A new life of consultative selling – providing solutions – being an expert on who you’re selling to rather than what you’re selling. In short, a proper grown-up job. Finally, she asked me: “Do you have any questions?”

I said: “Will I need a new outfit?”

My manager gave me her famous tight smile. “Ah yes, that’s something else we need to discuss. That attitude of yours.”

But seriously, what is changing in my professional life is the shift from a ‘lone wolf’ approach – hitting the road with one goal in mind, only talking when there’s a product to be sold, regarding my colleagues as deadly rivals, living just to put ticks beside names on my list – to a sense of being embedded in a dynamic professional network of stakeholders across various sectors. Every day brings new people and new ideas.

I’m not just a lonely sales functionary, I’m one of many points of contact between a changing company and its changing customer base, and my role is to communicate and learn, to work out how Munchkin Pharma can meet customer needs across a local healthcare landscape that is changing so fast it feels like the NHS has become a computer game. I feel more connected to my own colleagues as well as to the people with whom I’m building commercial relationships.

Instead of the false personalisation of sales – the fake smile, the fluttered eyelashes, the lowered voice – there’s the real personal engagement of understanding what your customer wants to achieve, the customer understanding what you want to achieve, and the common ground on which you both take a step forward. That only happens when you think hard instead of just talking hard.

Farewell to the black book, hello to the iPad. And what’s commanding my attention for much of the working day is the increasingly widespread and diverse character of the NHS online. It’s not just who is commissioning and prescribing, it’s how, for whom, on what basis and according to which budget. If the NHS had a Facebook profile its relationship status would be ‘It’s complicated.’

This weekend, I’m getting my hair reshaped and my wardrobe restocked. I’m partying in my usual restrained style. Another day for rest and recuperation, and I’ll be ready for the working week. And then the real fun will start.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) has formed a global collaboration with ten leading cancer research institutions to develop drugs for immuno-oncology.

A unique global collaboration between industry and academia, the International Immuno-Oncology Network (II-ON) will focus on harnessing the body’s immune system to fight cancer.

II-ON will facilitate the translation of scientific research findings into drug discovery and development, clinical trials and new treatments.

As well as BMS, the network includes leading medical research institutions in Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the US and the UK (the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Institute of Cancer Research, London).

Elliott Sigal, executive VP, Chief Scientific Officer and President of Research and Development at BMS, described the II-ON as “a public-private partnership that will leverage intellectual capabilities across a global network,” with a shared commitment to developing “our understanding of immuno-oncology towards our ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes”.

In 2011 “evading immune destruction” was added to the ‘Hallmarks of Cancer’, a standard reference on the traits of malignant cancers.

BMS is developing a number of immunotherapeutic drugs for patients with different types of cancer.

The spread of drug-resistant strains of gonorrhoea led to a 25% rise in newly diagnosed cases of the disease in England in 2011.

With some European patients showing full resistance to first-line treatments, the Health Protection Agency has warned that gonorrhea may become “a very difficult infection to treat”.

The growing medical crisis highlights the need for new and more specific antibiotics that was noted by GSK’s Andrew Witty in March.

Gonorrhoea is a bacterial infection that can lead to infertility if not effectively treated with antibiotics.

Professor Cathy Ison, a gonorrhoea expert at the HPA, said that drug resistance had been dealt with in the past by the use of a new drug – but now there isn’t one.

Dr Gwenda Hughes, Head of Sexually Transmitted Infection Surveillance at the HPA, warned: “We are worried that in the next five years, or some point in the future, that this is going to be a very difficult infection to treat.”

Sexual health will shortly become the responsibility of local authorities rather than the NHS, though medication will remain essential to the treatment of sexually transmitted infections.

A Devonshire NHS trust that pioneered the delivery of integrated health and social care has abandoned plans to seek independent foundation trust (FT) status.

Torbay and Southern Devon Health and Care Trust (TSDHCT) is now seeking to merge with an existing or emerging FT.

The decision followed a report that the Trust was unlikely to meet Monitor’s economic criteria for FT status because many of its services are not profitable.

The trust stated that reducing the scope of its services in order to meet the criteria was not compatible with “maintaining and developing good integrated care”.

South Devon Healthcare FT is thought to be Torbay’s most likely partner.

A former PCT provider arm, TSDHCT has provided integrated health and social care for a population of 300,000 people since 2006.

TSDHCT Chief Executive Anthony Farnsworth said shortly before the decision that while the unprofitable aspects of the trust’s work could be managed within a PCT, they meant Torbay would not “pass the test of viability” to gain FT status.

He noted: “Although the pressing immediate question is one of financial viability, the more profound consideration is whether the best option is to make the organisation viable (but possibly smaller) in pursuit of the FT application at the possible expense of our local system of health and care services.”

Following the board’s decision to seek a partner, he added: “The approach agreed will provide us with the financial security enjoyed by a larger organisation, and a solid footing from which to deliver and develop integrated care for the future.”