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Not only did Shakespeare know a great deal about human nature, he knew something about brand equity: a name has value. Four hundred years later, marketers grapple to understand the association between brands and profitability.

Menlo Park, California-Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance jumped 11 percent from spring 2000 to spring 2001-the biggest increase since 1992-and payers blame that huge spike on pharmaceutical expenditures.

"My father had some great sayings, and one of them was: 'Never do a deal that's not a good deal for the other guy.'" So remembers Donal Geaney, chairman and CEO of Ireland-based Elan. Geaney's new American colleague Daniel Welch, president of Elan Pharmaceuticals, smiles in agreement from the other side of the table.

I heard the first bird of the morning whistling to his lover. Their small wings owned the sky again while the people fled for cover.

At least 10 million Americans at high risk for type 2 diabetes can sharply lower their chances of getting the disease with diet and exercise, according to the findings of a major clinical trial announced by HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson at the National Institutes of Health.

Demands on physicians aren't just coming from reps.

The worldwide market for pain management therapeutics is expected to grow from $22 billion in 2000 to $30 billion in 2007, according to "Pain Management: A Strategic Market Analysis," a new report from Foster City, CA-based Front Line Strategic Management Consulting Inc.

Where should the drug store of the future be located? Adjacent to doctors' offices, according to 56% of respondents in the second AmeriSource Index, a nationwide, quarterly survey released today by AmeriSource Health Corporation, Valley Forge, PA. Shopping malls were a distant second, with 19% of respondents selecting this choice. Trailing behind were the Internet (5%), office buildings (3%), health clubs and gyms (2%), and restaurants (1%).

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examines women's use of ambulatory medical care in 1997 and 1998, and finds that their care differs from men in many significant ways. Even excluding pregnancy-related visits, women were 33% more likely than men to visit a doctor, although this difference decreased with age. The rate of doctor visits for such reasons as annual examinations and preventive services was 100% higher for women than for men, and medication patterns differed significantly. Women were not only more likely to receive hormones, but also dramatically more likely to have an antidepressant prescribed.

What do you do when given only a small amount of time to detail your product?

The Washington-based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging a new Florida law that seeks to offset a $214 million reduction in the state's Medicaid prescription drug budget by creating a new state Medicaid formulary.

Cincinnati-based Queen City Physicians is charging pharmaceutical representatives $65 for 10 minutes of time with doctors. The group, which is composed of roughly 50 physicians in specialties ranging from internal medicine to pediatrics, is hoping the fees will help pay for a new computerized medical records system and also streamline the detailing process for reps and doctors.

Ah … the infamous work contact! As a pharmaceutical representative, and then as a district sales manager in the late '80s, I became intimately familiar with the practice of riding with your manager from both the passenger's and the driver's sides of the car.

Just three hours of advice and counseling by doctors and other healthcare professionals over two years can boost sedentary adults' physical fitness, according to a new study sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Nurses can be powerful advocates.

Working effectively as a team.

A national survey of employers, released jointly by the Menlo Park, CA-based Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington-based Health Research and Educational Trust, found that smaller employers (three to 199 employees) are significantly more likely than larger employers (200 or more employees) to support a person's right to sue a health plan, and are somewhat more likely to support the right to appeal a health plan's decision to an independent reviewer. Two-thirds (67%) of smaller employers express support for the right to sue a health plan, compared with 28% of larger employers. Eighty-six percent of smaller employers and 74% of larger employers support independent review. However, the survey found that support for both the right to sue and independent review decreases if employers are told that the cost of health insurance might increase as a result.

As policy makers struggle to devise a pharmacy benefit for Medicare patients, pressure mounts to impose spending limits on medications. In turn, consumer activists are challenging industry’s longtime claim that price controls will reduce investment in R&D for life-saving therapies.

In religion, belief comes first. In science, it comes last. And in politics, as in publishing, you can often find it for sale.

London-Schering and Biogen have both expressed anger over the leak of a National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) document suggesting that doctors stop prescribing beta-interferon to new multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.

London-Following a review of its own drug discovery capabilities, GlaxoSmithKline practically gave away its majority stake in Affymax to a group of venture capitalists led by Patricof.

Geneva-The usually quiet International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA) leapt to Pfizer’s defense after Oxfam International criticized the US company about access to medicines in the developing world.

For the past 20 years, the blockbuster model has dominated the pharmaceutical industry. It has generated tremendous value for companies and shareholders and will likely continue to do so well into the future. That business design matched Big Pharma's expansive product development and marketing investments with the ample supply of opportunities for benefiting large patient populations and allowed an unusually large number of players to succeed in the high-stakes game. Not all companies can continue to win that game, however, so new fields of competition will be needed.

Berlin-The German healthcare system is ailing, and politicians are too timid and inefficient to do anything about it, according to the Verband Forschender Arzneimittelhersteller (VFA), Germany’s pharmaceutical industry trade association.

European Union-Both prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) industry sectors have welcomed the long-awaited proposals to overhaul EU pharma legislation.

If only two words could be used to describe Big Pharma's promotional spend trends during the past 12 months, they would be "it depends." Budgets are simply tools and the industry uses them as such: to determine just the right spend, on a certain type of product, during a particular phase of its life cycle.

The unprecedented proliferation of new digital and traditional media vehicles is surpassed only by the continued growth of pharma marketing budgets and promotional spending. The combination of the two has generated an industry stir-among product managers, their agency partners, and publishers-about what constitutes the optimal media mix for today's pharma brands.

President Bush has announced a new Medicare-endorsed prescription drug discount card program designed to immediately help Medicare beneficiaries lower their out-of-pocket drug costs.

According to a new report issued by London-based Datamonitor, sales forces are growing in size, but sales force return on investment is decreasing. The report reveals that physicians have less time to see sales representatives but are contacted by an increasing number as pharmaceutical sales forces expand. Therefore, reps are spending an increasing proportion of their time trying to gain access to physicians rather than actually detailing. As a result, the return on investment in the sales function is declining.

California and New York may be the nation's most populous states, but they and other big states, like Florida, New Jersey, Minnesota and Massachusetts, placed at or near the bottom in per capita prescription drug use, according to St. Louis-based pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts. The company measured per capita prescription drug use, across the nation, using a random sample of commercially insured members (age 18 to 64) of its pharmacy benefit plans.