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The pharma industry has traditionally defined effective public relations by the number of positive press clips a campaign generates.

Sixteen years ago I began to edit Pharmaceutical Executive, a magazine unknown to me only a few months before. Today, I wonder how much I've learned in all the time since.

The number of pharmaceuticals derived from nature is staggering. Many medicine cabinet staples were first isolated from natural sources-penicillin from mold, quinine from the cinchona tree, digitalis (foxglove) for heart ailments, and the list goes on.

The Enron/Arthur Andersen debacle has been a painful warning that there is more to analyzing corporate performance than the smoke and mirrors that often pass for accounting and financial scrutiny. Indicators such as brand value, new product revenue, presence and percentage of business conducted in the US market, and sales growth provide more reliable criteria for companies' short and long-term prospects.

Investors have lost confidence in the market. Specifically, they have lost confidence in the information coming out of corporate America.

As healthcare struggles to reinvent itself, a confluence of major societal forces has irrevocably changed both the business world and the healthcare landscape.

Aventis announced plans to cut R&D costs by spinning out a stake in one of its research units. The private equity house Warburg Pincus will invest 60 million euro in ProSkelia, taking a 58 percent share.

If pharma companies want to be trusted sources of information in today's healthcare environment, they cannot afford to mislead anyone.

August 2002 CE.

Donal Geaney and Tom Lynch, chairman/CEO and vice-chairman, respectively, of the troubled Irish pharma company Elan, resigned following intense pressure from investors.

Search engine positioning (SEP) is a critical component of any online marketing plan. It is the art and science of increasing a website's visibility among major search engines and directories with a strategically defined set of key words.

Activist protests about access to, and the price of, AIDS medicines marked the International AIDS conference in Barcelona. But they failed to overshadow the promising results of research into new ways of attacking the virus.

Much has been said recently about how the blockbuster model can no longer sustain innovation and growth in the pharma industry. Hans-Joachim Lohrisch, CEO of German-based Altana Pharma AG, and George Cole, president of Altana Inc., its US subsidiary, beg to differ.

Just when pharma companies finally awake to the need for a good reputation, the stakes go vertical. The long-perceived and possibly illusory gap between shareholder behavior and public outrage suddenly disappears. And each company stands or falls on its revealed record.

When Pfizer gets in on a good thing, it isn't content to share. Two years ago the company initiated a semi-hostile takeover of Warner-Lambert to acquire full marketing rights to the hot-selling cholesterol treatment, Lipitor.

Successful pharmaceutical sales and marketing organizations operate much like healthy ecosystems: each interdependent group fills a critical need for the company's growth and survival. (See "Sales and Marketing Ecosystem," ) Yet many pharma com-panies can barely sustain past growth performance, let alone attain a higher level. If the trend continues unchecked, several pharma companies could falter.

Croatia's Pliva Pharmaceuticals is the first eastern European pharma company to make a US acquisition. Pliva paid $153 million for New Jersey-based Sobel Holdings,

Many industries today are looking to mobile and wireless solutions or handheld devices to improve business efficiencies, create more effective customer interactions, and deliver business value.

The debate about direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription medicines and internet information about therapeutic products is heating up again. Non-product-specific disease awareness campaigns are now allowed. In fact, Europeans were recently treated to retired Brazilian soccer star Pel¨sponsored by Pfizer) urging the afflicted to seek help for erectile dysfunction during World Cup commercial breaks .

The United Kingdom's much-maligned National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) could be in line for a shake-up if the recommendations of a House of Commons select committee go through.

In response to concerns about the low level of patient participation in clinical trials, the British Medical Association has launched an internet resource aimed at encouraging more patients to take part. Aimed at healthcare professionals, the site explains how different types of trials are conducted and spells out their ethical and best practices requirements.

Parma sales reps have long been using customer relationship management (CRM) systems to detail doctors and provide them with samples. But it was not until late 2000, when FDA initiated the final rule of 21 CFR Part 203 and 205, enforcing the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA) of 1987, that the industry grew attentive to the regulations governing CRM systems, also known as sales force automation (SFA) or sales force effectiveness (SFE) systems.

The House leadership collected just enough votes in late June to approve a Medicare reform bill that provides some coverage of pharmaceuticals for seniors. Democrats rebuked the measure as a scam and a fraud; some conservatives complained that it opened the door to a costly new entitlement.

In case anyone missed the recent wave of studies and reports documenting rising expenditures on medicines, Families USA weighed in with an analysis that further documents rising prices of medicines prescribed for the elderly. The report surfaced just before the US House of Representatives voted on a Medicare pharmacy benefit and was timed to influence that debate.

To win consumers' trust and loyalty, pharma companies should look to the privacy regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to guide their direct-to-consumer (DTC) and web strategies.

July 2002 CE.

In a closely watched patent case that has important implications for pharma companies, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in May to uphold policies that protect patent holders from imitators. The decision, in what is considered one of the most significant patent disputes to come before the court, is expected to benefit brand-name companies that bring patent infringement cases against generics makers.

The Australian government has an unusual plan for reducing prescription drug costs: enlist the help of pharma sales reps to explain the country's pharmaceutical benefits scheme (PBS) prescribing requirements to doctors.

As part of an aggressive campaign against the rising cost of medicines, AARP, the national advocacy group for Americans over 50, joined three class-action lawsuits against pharma companies involving alleged anticompetitive efforts to block generic competition and inflate prices.

Setbacks sometimes prompt a great leap forward. For Sankyo, a major product withdrawal-most painfully, of its potential blockbuster for diabetes, Rezulin (troglitazone)-created the reversal. Major liver effects appeared in the market