Pharmaceutical Executive-07-01-2005

These are demanding times for pharmaceutical marketers.

If congressmen gathered to work through the nuances of banning ED drugs from reimbursement under Medicare, they'd still back the ban. But the decision would be grounded in lack of faith in prescribing behavior, not disregard for a debilitating condition.

The cost of healthcare has become so great that it's important to review the evidence to determine whether the drug is a good value for the money. Yet, pharmacoeconomics is rarely included in the decision process.

If congressmen gathered to work through the nuances of banning ED drugs from reimbursement under Medicare, they'd still back the ban. But the decision would be grounded in lack of faith in prescribing behavior, not disregard for a debilitating condition.

Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals discovered that a network resulting from even a modest integration offered benefits that exceeded the sum of its parts.

We all remember the Greek myth about old King Sisyphus. In life, he was a trickster, but the gods got the last laugh in the afterlife by making it his fate to push a huge boulder up a mountain only to see it roll down just before reaching the summit-again and again for all eternity.

What Pharma Wants From IT Today

Garry Barnes says he joined the pharma industry for job security-but don't believe him. During the last 25 years, Barnes has worked for four pharma companies and built five sales forces in therapeutic areas ranging from contraception to organ transplantation.

Plantiffs did not try to establish a link between the purported misconduct and the decline in share price. Rather, their sole allegation was that they had paid artificially inflated prices for Dura securities.

For pharma companies large and small, one of the most pressing challenges of the next few years will be to understand compliance at a much deeper level, to obtain the tools to make it possible.

Without common reporting standards in place, researchers have little incentive to share data with scientists elsewhere in the company. When researchers don't sharedata on a regular basis, they can begin to feel proprietary about their work-and even less inclined to disclose their results.

It's an open question whether a pharmaceutical company really needs to have the drug testing process inside its corporate walls, or whether they really should be focusing much more on building effective relationships, in terms of building awareness and acceptance of their products, with both the physicians and end consumers.

After the merger, Wyeth had dozens of incentive plans for several thousand employees.

Pilot projects involving RFID technology are appearing at some major pharma companies. But uptake of RFID-based solutions remains limited due to concerns about accuracy, reliability, and ROI.

Pharma companies believe that they can compete in an e-prescribing environment if information systems permit full disclosure and allow doctors to create bookmarks that link easily to information they want.

Without common reporting standards in place, researchers have little incentive to share data with scientists elsewhere in the company. When researchers don't sharedata on a regular basis, they can begin to feel proprietary about their work-and even less inclined to disclose their results.

Traders say parallel distribution of drugs generates savings for patients. Industry says it creates more profits for traders, leaving pharma with less R&D funding.

Accept distortions and untruths. Don't try to undo them. The point is not to win an argument; your critics' views are legitimate, irreversible realities. It's time to give the public something new to think about.

The race among health information portals may result in better content offerings for consumers. Advertisers that move first have the opportunity to buy out targeted inventory at a good rate.