Pharmaceutical Users Software Exchange (PhUSE) Limited (A company limited by guarantee) Registered Number:

Transcription

1 Pharmaceutical Users Software Exchange (PhUSE) Limited (A company limited by guarantee) Registered Number: Minutes of the Annual General Meeting Number of attendees: 36 The fourth AGM was held at the Congress Centre, Basel, Switzerland on the 20th October 2009 at 9am. Introduction and apologies: Stephen Bamford, President of PhUSE opened the meeting by welcoming the members. Apologies were received from Olivier Leconte. Minutes Minutes of the 2008 Annual General Meeting were accepted as accurate and there were no matters arising. For: 2 Against: 0 Abstain: 0 President s Address The President (Stephen Bamford) thanked everyone for attending the AGM. The PhUSE financial year mirrors the calendar year. The accounts were published on the PhUSE Website in February 2008 was the first year as a society. Overall we made a small surplus of 12,800 but we had to pay UK corporation tax (22%) (Even though we are a not for profit organisation) which resulted in an overall net gain for just over 10,000. When you look at the detail, we made 13,000 in favourable currency transactions so we would have actually made a small loss for the year if it weren t for this. Each year PhUSE takes on a massive financial liability in running the conference PhUSE currently has reserved of 102,000 and there is a medium term aim to grow the reserves to around 250,000

2 It would be very hard to miss that we find ourselves in unprecedented financial times. PhUSE has slowed some of the activities that we were going to roll out (such as elearning). We have trimmed items for the conference (such as give away items in the bag, the Sunday night social, and cut down on the late finish to the Monday night event We also looked at the meetings we were going to hold call for papers kick off, location of SDE, committee meetings via TC. All these actions (together with a successful conference) should result in a surplus this year. Accounts will be released during 1Q10 PhUSE were planning to change the Board of Directors (BoD) straight after last s year conference but the need to plan for the financial crisis and protect PhUSE put this on ice and work started again this summer. At the conference we announced part of our strategy to build for the future by increasing membership levels: o By offering the early bird discount for society membership we will get better cash flow so that we don t need to rely on larger reserves. o The corporate membership will reduce our support overheads. o The e-rate will diversify our membership base. o We will continue to offer financial discounts to SDEs and the conference by becoming members. o We will continue to build links with PSI, ESUG, ACDM and others to get best value for our members. All of these together will lead to increased membership and the more members we have the better services we can offer and the more interaction, knowledge sharing and networking opportunities come available for our members. As we move past our fifth conference, the legal advice we took in the summer suggested that we have legal members, a Board of Directors, Sub committees and then the full membership pool. This is different to other societies but is modern thinking and is based on the final aspects of the 2006 Companies Act coming into force. This structure is scalable and will allow PhUSE to concentrate on the membership whilst retaining good strong corporate governance.

3 The role of the sub-committee is new to PhUSE (apart from the conference committee) and will drive PhUSE forward into new initiatives and projects. The new PhUSE BoD will comprise of the following roles: o There will be five regional directors UK, Switzerland, Germany, Rest of Europe, and Rest of World to represent the membership. o Industry links is a new position to increase the value add and the expectations of the discipline. o Training and development is a combination of two previous roles. o Commercial Role remains vital to the success of PhUSE. o Conference director is a new role to work alongside the conference chair and co-chair (who will concentrate on content). o Publications include newsletter and the journal. o President & Secretary are actually roles and can be done by any director. These two roles ensure good governance and will pull everything together. One of the first jobs of the new Directors is to form subcommittees to help them deliver the strategy. We have a great pool of people who have helped on the conference committee and we would like some of these people to diversify into other tasks.

4 Following the legal review of PhUSE Limited this year, we will be releasing a new members handbook This will include the term of reference behind each of the BoD position, it will include definition of membership classes and will also detail the election process going forward This will be in place by end of the year and in fact the ToR are all on the PHUSE website in the members section. Alongside creating the members handbook, over the next year the BoD will develop and start to deliver a three year PhUSE Strategy The President concluded by wishing everyone a successful and enjoyable conference. Secretary s Report / Treasurer s Report The Secretary/Treasurer (James McDermott). The administrative and financial reports had been presented in the presidential address. There were no questions of the Secretary. Election of Board Members As per the legal advice, people who have already served on the PHUSE Conference Committee or have been actively involved in the running of PhUSE Projects would first fill the roles. New people to the BoD are: Francis Kendall (Roche) Ann Martin (UCB) Michael Whitworth (AstraZeneca) Leo Valmas (Quintiles) The PhUSE Handbook will contain a section on re-election and a future nomination process.

5 Election of Officers There is no requirement to re-elect the officers in Election of Auditors Michael Martin Partnership was proposed to continue as auditors. The President expressed his thanks. Life Membership Gary Hearfield was duly elected a Life Member and presented with Honorary Membership in recognition of his contribution to the Steering Board and support for the Single Day Events over the last 5 years. Stephen Harrison was duly elected a Life Member and presented with Honorary Membership in recognition of the work he has done building links with PSI and ESUG. Olivier Leconte was duly elected a Life Member and presented with Honorary Membership in recognition of his hard work with he Single Day events as well as conference chair Dirk Spruck was duly elected a Life Member and presented with Honorary Membership in recognition of being Editor-in Chief of the Journal and conference chair Any Other Business There was no other business to discuss. The meeting closed at: 9.40am Signed: Dated: