Company:

Investors: New Enterprise Associates, Tesaro management

Scoop: Two years after Eisai bought MGI Pharma for $3.9 billion, a group of former MGI Pharma execs joined together to found Tesaro. In May, the tiny company landed $60 million in start-up funding to acquire, develop and commercialize cancer therapeutics and supportive care products. New Enterprise Associates forked over $20 million in start-up funding and has reserved $40 million to support company growth.

Related Articles:
Eisai expands U.S. ops with $3.9B MGI buyout
MGI alum garner $60M to launch new cancer drug developer

Read more from the original source
Tesaro: Top 5 Biotech VC deals, H1 2010

Read the original here
Nycomed US names new CEO

Below are some Regulatory Catalyst Index updates for companies with recent FDA and clinical trial related news…

BioSante Pharma (NASDAQ:BPAX)

Complete Story »

• A recent study ranked the U.S. sixth among the top 40 industrialized nations in innovative competitiveness, but 40th out of 40 in “the rate of change in innovation capacity” over the past decade.

• The industry I know best, biopharmaceuticals, is facing unprecedented pressure. R&D costs continue to rise, fewer potential new medicines gain regulatory approval, and key products lose patent protection. In fact, the number of new molecular entities approved by the FDA over the past five years—92—is lower than in any other five-year period since I entered the industry in the late 1970s.

• When it comes to sustaining innovation, the burden remains on enterprising businesses.

• The one thing that industry has a right to ask of public policy is to help preserve the environment in which innovation is possible.

• While the legislation would extend the R&D tax credit, the bill also includes international tax revenue raisers that will hurt the U.S. economy and deplete American jobs.

• The final and most important elements are the seeds of innovation, which equate to talented people and their ideas. Human beings—with their talent and energy, creativity and insights—are a priceless resource, but one that is woefully underdeveloped in this country.

This is a very compelling argument but at the heart of any innovation is change: change in the way business is done and change with the pharmaceutical industry has been reluctant to embrace. Like I have said many times before these changes did not happen overnight, they have been coming for a long long while and companies that can’t see and prepare for the future are going to sustain damage that will effect strategic shareholder value.

One of the areas of change that the industry has not embraced is the addiction to blockbuster drugs. Again and again we have seen attempts to replace aging blockbusters with new and improved versions of drugs even though insurers are now asking for proof that new brands are substantially better than generics. Authors have been pointing to the Long Tail, a business model where you have several brands selling well rather than one really big brand that is a blockbuster, but still the drug industry wants that gold ring to keep cash coming in and keep the Street happy.

As for public policy to keep innovation possible it’s kind of hard to ask for legislation favoring innovation for the drug industry when politicians and consumers view the drug industry as money hungry corporations who put profits ahead of patients. What has the pharma industry done to change these perceptions ?

I’m not even going to go into the international tax revenue debate. While Forest Laboratories Inc. sells Lexapro only in the U.S. their creative accounting ensures most of its profits aren’t taxed here — and they face little tax anywhere else. Forest cut its U.S. tax bill by more than a third last year with a technique known as transfer pricing, a method that carves an estimated $60 billion a year from the U.S. Treasury as it combines tax planning. Transfer pricing lets companies such as Forest, Oracle Corp., Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer Inc., legally avoid some income taxes by converting sales in one country to profits in another — on paper only, and often in places where they have few employees or actual sales.

Finally there are the talented people. How many “talented people” have lost jobs in the pharma industry this year while pharma CEO’s continue to rake in millions of dollars in salaries and perks ? How can the pharma industry expect to recruit talented people in marketing when even if you do a great job you could quickly find your position eliminated when your brand comes off patent ?

I live for DTC marketing and it is my passion but the atmosphere in which a lot of marketers work is slowly draining their passion because of processes that are outdated and because of company politics. When I was at Lilly I kept a copy of Sidney Taurel’s booklet on leadership (the the CEO at Lilly) on my best and every time I tried to use on of his principles I faced enormous roadblocks by people who were more interested in their titles than doing what was best for patients. I was lucky enough to fight through those roadblocks and earn a Marketing Excel award at Lilly but only because I had an excellent brand team leader (Matt) and manager Diana & Paula) who believed in me.

If the pharma industry is going to survive John it has to change the way it does business internally. You need to go to more of an open leadership model and meet with everyone to let them know that patients come first not The Street. Your decision to put more money into R&D while others are putting less is a great first step but innovation starts with people and right now those people are shell shocked and choked by matrix organizations that stifle innovation.

Read the original here
A response to John Lechleiter on America’s Growing Innovation Gap

• A recent study ranked the U.S. sixth among the top 40 industrialized nations in innovative competitiveness, but 40th out of 40 in “the rate of change in innovation capacity” over the past decade.

• The industry I know best, biopharmaceuticals, is facing unprecedented pressure. R&D costs continue to rise, fewer potential new medicines gain regulatory approval, and key products lose patent protection. In fact, the number of new molecular entities approved by the FDA over the past five years—92—is lower than in any other five-year period since I entered the industry in the late 1970s.

• When it comes to sustaining innovation, the burden remains on enterprising businesses.

• The one thing that industry has a right to ask of public policy is to help preserve the environment in which innovation is possible.

• While the legislation would extend the R&D tax credit, the bill also includes international tax revenue raisers that will hurt the U.S. economy and deplete American jobs.

• The final and most important elements are the seeds of innovation, which equate to talented people and their ideas. Human beings—with their talent and energy, creativity and insights—are a priceless resource, but one that is woefully underdeveloped in this country.

This is a very compelling argument but at the heart of any innovation is change: change in the way business is done and change with the pharmaceutical industry has been reluctant to embrace. Like I have said many times before these changes did not happen overnight, they have been coming for a long long while and companies that can’t see and prepare for the future are going to sustain damage that will effect strategic shareholder value.

One of the areas of change that the industry has not embraced is the addiction to blockbuster drugs. Again and again we have seen attempts to replace aging blockbusters with new and improved versions of drugs even though insurers are now asking for proof that new brands are substantially better than generics. Authors have been pointing to the Long Tail, a business model where you have several brands selling well rather than one really big brand that is a blockbuster, but still the drug industry wants that gold ring to keep cash coming in and keep the Street happy.

As for public policy to keep innovation possible it’s kind of hard to ask for legislation favoring innovation for the drug industry when politicians and consumers view the drug industry as money hungry corporations who put profits ahead of patients. What has the pharma industry done to change these perceptions ?

I’m not even going to go into the international tax revenue debate. While Forest Laboratories Inc. sells Lexapro only in the U.S. their creative accounting ensures most of its profits aren’t taxed here — and they face little tax anywhere else. Forest cut its U.S. tax bill by more than a third last year with a technique known as transfer pricing, a method that carves an estimated $60 billion a year from the U.S. Treasury as it combines tax planning. Transfer pricing lets companies such as Forest, Oracle Corp., Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer Inc., legally avoid some income taxes by converting sales in one country to profits in another — on paper only, and often in places where they have few employees or actual sales.

Finally there are the talented people. How many “talented people” have lost jobs in the pharma industry this year while pharma CEO’s continue to rake in millions of dollars in salaries and perks ? How can the pharma industry expect to recruit talented people in marketing when even if you do a great job you could quickly find your position eliminated when your brand comes off patent ?

I live for DTC marketing and it is my passion but the atmosphere in which a lot of marketers work is slowly draining their passion because of processes that are outdated and because of company politics. When I was at Lilly I kept a copy of Sidney Taurel’s booklet on leadership (the the CEO at Lilly) on my best and every time I tried to use on of his principles I faced enormous roadblocks by people who were more interested in their titles than doing what was best for patients. I was lucky enough to fight through those roadblocks and earn a Marketing Excel award at Lilly but only because I had an excellent brand team leader (Matt) and manager Diana & Paula) who believed in me.

If the pharma industry is going to survive John it has to change the way it does business internally. You need to go to more of an open leadership model and meet with everyone to let them know that patients come first not The Street. Your decision to put more money into R&D while others are putting less is a great first step but innovation starts with people and right now those people are shell shocked and choked by matrix organizations that stifle innovation.

Read more from the original source
How many "talented people" have lost jobs in the pharma industry this year? A response to John Lechleiter on America’s Growing Innovation…

Read more from the original source
Takeda adds $1.5B for new drug buys

According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal (see here), URL Pharma’s general counsel sent letters to several physicians who criticized the company’s new treatment for gout on an online message board for rheumatologists sponsored by the American College of Rheumatology. The drug in question is Colcrys, which is equivalent to generic colchicine, a drug that cost pennies and has been around for so long that its use “predated the Food and Drug Administration and therefore didn’t require the agency’s vetting.”

When Colcrys came on the market, a number of physicians voiced their displeasure online. Some doctors had advocated use of colchicine. “In response, URL Pharma’s general counsel sent letters to several of the critics asking them to ‘clarify the record’ and saying there were ‘potential risks and liability’ associated with using unapproved versions.”

“‘These are shake-down letters to silence’ critics, said John Goldman, an Atlanta rheumatologist. In his postings, he had criticized URL Pharma for conducting limited research and for its pricing of Colcrys. URL Pharma says it reached out to physicians to educate them about its clinical trials and help them prescribe the drug appropriately, not to quash criticism.”

“We were trying to alert this small group of misinformed physicians to the fact that they were being led into medical malpractice liability,” the company said in a statement.

URL’s action may not be indicative of how the pharma industry as a whole “engages” with physicians who use social media, but it raises an important issue regarding pharma’s participation in closed social networks such as the rheumatology discussion board in question. Obviously, URL physician employees or physicians hired by URL or an agency of URL were “lurking” on the board monitoring discussions. This is probably a common practice of many pharma companies. Should these agents identify themselves to the community?

In other cases, pharma companies have been transparent about their monitoring of physician communities. Pfizer, for example, has a deal with Sermo that allows their physicians to join the Sermo physician community. These physicians are clearly identified with a special logo, I believe. They obviously can “lurk” and not be seen unless they post a message, but Sermo and Pfizer were quite open about it to the Sermo community (see “Pfizer has a Gold Mine in Sermo!“).

BTW, URL Pharma should have read this post I made over a year ago: “Social Media: Ask Permission to Join the Conversation First or You Just Might Get Your Ass Kicked!“

Also see How Should Pharma Engage in Patient/Physician Social Networks? Survey Results.

Read more here
One Pharma Company’s Social Media Policy: Threaten Physicians Who Complain About Your Drug Online

On July 1 Arena Pharmaceuticals (ARNA) announced a US marketing partnership for its late-stage obesity drug candidate lorcaserin with the US arm of Japan’s Eisai, known for gastrointestinal drugs, among others. A well-attended conference call was held before market open, which will be archived on the company’s web site for 30 days.

Reasonable people may disagree whether this is the long hoped-for partnership with Big Pharma by one of the three small-pharma obesity drug developers, ARNA, Vivus Inc. (VVUS) and Orexigen Therapeutics (OREX), all of whom have drug candidates up for FDA review and approval within the next 6 months. While I personally would think of the top dozen or so companies by worldwide revenues when people say "Big Pharma" — Pfizer (PFE) , GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Roche et al. — Eisai is certainly in or close to the top 20, depending on who’s counting and over what period, and a muscular partner.

Complete Story »

In my SA article from May, I discussed the potential value for Lorcaserin in the marketplace.

As I stated then, " a partnership before approval can quickly change the game. I fully expect that to happen and once it does, we’ll have insight into how Big Pharma values a First Line Obesity Treatment."

Complete Story »

Want to learn more? Our Pharma Search Engine Marketing specialists provided the below brief to our clients last week, and I wanted to share it with you all as well. Did your digital agency partner let you know about it already? Hopefully so … but we’re learning that not everyone was aware of the change. Google hasn’t exactly been promoting it much either.  Hat tip to our search dudes Dave and Nathan for their insights.

On June 21st, Google launched a new feature in search results that they are calling “Medication Search.” This new feature is a partnership with NIH that will provide more detailed information about medications directly from the search results page. Now, if you search for a particular drug by brand name, the official product site will no longer be the top result displayed in Google’s results. Through their partnership with the NIH, Google will display government pages containing detailed information about the product (what it is, side effects, how to take, dietary instruction, etc.).

While this feature is still very new, the Intouch search team wanted to make all our clients aware of this update and the potential concerns and opportunities this new feature creates:

Concerns
The primary concern with this new feature relates to the way in which users interact with search engine results pages. Common statistics claim that 47% of all searchers will click on the #1 organic result for this search, and that percentage drops to 12% for listings in the #2 position. From our experience and through data analysis of our pharma sites we manage, we know that  the brand name is by far the top natural search term. This is largely due to the fact that Brand.com typically owns the #1 position for brand name searches. With this new feature, brand.com will be dropped to the #2 position, which we believe will lead to a drastic decrease in natural search referrals for that term.

While the new feature has only been live for a few days, a quick analysis shows that we have seen a decline in visits from brand name searches by an aggregated total of 30% when compared to last Tuesday (June 15th). Some brands have seen as much as a 65% drop while others have not yet been impacted by this change in Google search results.

Opportunities
While there are some very strong concerns about this new turn of events, this also opens up an opportunity for pharmaceutical SEO to evolve. Brand name searches are a major traffic driver for most pharmaceutical brand.com sites, but with the potential significant decrease in natural search traffic from their top keyword, this opens up the opportunities for pharma SEO to engage long-tail terms. These are terms which individually have lower search volume and lower competition. These terms, if grouped together, can bring more traffic and more relevant users to a given site.

In short, further integration of SEO strategy into overall online brand planning can help offset some of the losses that will incurred at the expense of this new search feature.

I’ve blogged in the past about Big Government going after pharma and pharma marketers. At the risk of sounding political, this latest move by NIH and Google U.S. feels more like Google China to me. And if you are into the political implications of this (my husband is a card-carrying Libertarian so he was all over it) here’s some perspective from Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine quoting our search expert Dave Anderson.

What do you think? Is this move by Google in everyones’ best interest, or is the government exerting a bit too much control? Did Google ultimately make the change to get more money out of Pharma paid search? Should there be more transparent disclosures from Google about this change?

The implications – to me – should be a bit frightening to us all.

Read more from the original source
The Gov’t Controls Google’s Search Results for Your Brand. Surprised?

“We continue to have reservations about (the company’s) R&D capabilities and this announcement only confirms those,” Miller Tabak & Co. analyst Les Funtleyder noted in an AP story, which helpfully recaps the litany of pipeline snafus that have afflicted Pfizer over the past 18 months. Pfizer has had five late-stage cancer failures over the past year and a half, and just last week two of its licensed programs with biotech companies produced disappointing trial data on pain. And then, of course, there was Dimebon, an enticing potential blockbuster for Alzheimer’s which worked no better than a placebo in Medivation’s Phase III.

“While our latest announcements demonstrate the risks and difficulties inherent in working with complex diseases, our pipeline demonstrates our ongoing commitment to focus on high-priority disease areas where there is significant unmet medical need,” Pfizer spokesman Ray Kerins tells the wire service.

Pfizer’s commitment to unmet medical needs, a mantra of the pharma industry, did little to calm restless investors, who have had to deal with a cut in dividends. Pfizer’s shares dipped three percent on Thursday, no small change for a company with a market value of $68 billion.

- here’s the article from the AP

Related Articles:
Pfizer R&D chief touts ‘golden age’ of drug discovery
Pfizer to chop up to $3B from R&D budget
Merger distracts Pfizer from biotech incubator
Lipitor – Big Patent Expirations of 2010

Read the original here
Analysts fret over Pfizer’s litany of pipeline snafus

Listening to patients. If physicians get it then how come drug company marketers can’t get it ? As we debate the use of social media and marketing here and on other websites we tend to forget that we need to making mass assumptions for everyone. Not only is each disease state different but the way each patient approaches each disease state is different as well. We can no longer lump patients into 3-4 segments and then develop targeted messages at each segment. Today it is segmentation bases on beliefs and attitudes which in turn leads to the need for a more in depth relationship, a relationship that for the most part the pharma industry has largely ignored.

Consumer marketers are quickly learning the power of one and what I call “real marketing”. Real marketing is genuine and talks to people as people not as segments. In order to leverage this pharma marketers should;

✓ Be looking at customized patient brochures based on a survey when patients request information.

✓ Using multiple home pages on their web sites tied into keywords via search.

✓ Providing physicians with content that can be customizes on their practice websites.

✓ In depth development of CRM to drive patient behavior.

Listening is the first step in ANY conversation but you can’t listen when all you want to do is sell. The transformation has better happen soon for DTC marketers or else they risk more budget cuts while they ask market research people to show only the good data (the one with ROI that makes it look like TV works).

Read the original here
We need to listen to our patient’s words and treat their experience

“Humana develops health game for iPhone http://bit.ly/biQKlQ”

“Besides developing original games for health,” said Paul Puopolo, leader of Humana’s Games for Health, “we partner with game developers who are open to new business models to offer unique video games that can improve health and wellness.”

That’s an interesting goal for an iPhone app worthy of further investigation. So I went to the Humana Games for Health Web site and found this promo for the Humana iPhone game app called “Colorfall”:

This is a game like Tetris where you have to arrange cascading color squares. How does this game “improve health and wellness?” Well, you are prompted to get up off your behind and use the iPhone to photograph colorful objects such as a butter dish (shown below):

The app uses the dominate color to alter the color of squares, which can help you win the game.

In other words, this game improves health and wellness by encouraging you to move around. Huh? Usually, I play games when I’m stuck in the middle seat of an airplane and not able to move around. If I were at home and went into my frig looking for colorful foods, I might just pause the game and have a snack. Butter, hmmmmm…

Anyway, Colorfall looks like a game worth trying. But I will never download it because Humana has the nerve to charge $2.99! I asked Fabio: “Why would I pay $2.99 for these games from Humana – an insurance company with $bn in assets????” To which Fabio replied: “i agree. Should be free. Who will pay? Probably Pharma cos and competitors to learn/see what others are doing.”

If you are working for a pharma company and thinking of developing iPhone or iPad game apps, I doubt you would want to charge people $2.99. People hate the pharma industry enough and are sure not to pay. People probably hate insurance companies like Humana even more. So it’s a mystery to me why Humana charges people a fee.

A better business model for game apps is to offer free games that include motivational messages or links to useful information as part of the game.

Read more here
Humana’s iPhone/iPad "Games for Health": Would You Pay $2.99 to Play?

Last fall, I did a short post celebrating the pharma women of Twitter. I did it because we seemed like a rare breed – the few females who are involved in the pharma/healthcare industry, put themselves “out there” via social media, and use Twitter on a regular basis to share and connect around pharma digital marketing and PR. (Not to leave out the ever-special pharma Twitter dudes – we love you too - but you’re a little more prevalent, you understand …)

The original list is still certainly a good collection of experienced pharma women worth following, and I invite you to visit it if you haven’t already. But with the recent explosion of people on Twitter, I’ve been able to meet and follow many more Pharma/Healthcare Women of Twitter. So it was time to create “Celebrating the Pharma Women of Twitter – Part Deux.” Check ‘em out and give ‘em a follow if you’re so inclined …

1. Melissa Davies – Famous for her “1-in-500” adverse event report from her days at Nielson, Melissa is a few months into her new role at Return on Focus consulting. She’s smart and plugged into the industry – look for her at the next conference.
2. Marian Cutler – A self-described “Passionate communications maven,” I first met Marian at the 2009 FDA Hearings. I just love love love this woman’s energy. She’s one of those people that doesn’t know a stranger in the room, and a super-networker. Follow her and introduce yourself – you’ll be glad you did.
3. Janet Carlson – If Janet was at a conference you attended, you’d know it – the woman speaks up and speaks her mind, which I respect. She blogs and tweets about a variety of topics – all of which are interesting. She’s the founder and CEO of One Eleven Interactive, an interactive and mobile marketing agency.
4. Donna Cryer – a.k.a., “DCPatient,” Donna is another woman I met at the FDA hearing. Following her and reading her blog provides a smart and healthy dose of perspective from the patient (and sometimes even caregivers’) point-of-view. Follow her and stay grounded.
5. Dana Webster –  One of the things I like about friendly, personable Dana is that she’s not one to claim to know it all. Her Twitter description includes the description “Student of Social Media” – great point – we are all students here, aren’t we? One of her past claims to fame:  Serving as a (female) Cialis sales rep.
6. Betsy Stevenson –  Betsy is a great networker, conference frequenter, and knows her healthcare PR stuff. She’s a public relations business owner providing support for the biotech and pharma industries.
7. Arly Iampietro –  Known simply as “Arlyi,” on Twitter, Arly is an admirably consistent tweeter and often one of the first to identify the latest pharna social media canpaigns. In fact, she tweets about a lot of the same topics that I do. If you follow me, follow Arly.

There’s lots of smart pharma/healthcare women to follow out there. Follow these ladies first (here’s a shortcut to a Twitter list featuring both sets). Then – tell me – who am I missing?

Read more from the original source
Celebrating the Pharma Women of Twitter – Part Deux

Rich … I’ve been a consultant to the Canadian pharm industry in Canada for more than 25 years. In that time I believe I’ve read and delved into at least a zillion different blogs, newsletters and other of that ilk. It has been, sadly, a sometimes very painful process. Too many people, unfortunately, seem to believe that if they can read, they can also write. You, without question, write the most informative, lucid and interesting blog I have ever seen. It’s a “must read” for me and I eagerly await your new offerings. Thanks!!!

Imagine a world where pharma companies started to put patients first, relied more on personal marketing and less on mass marketing to reach, educate and covert patients to new drugs ? Imagine a drug company that releases ALL medical data related to their products not just the ones that show their products in good light ?

CEO’s today in the drug industry seem to be more driven to make decisions based on what’s best for their personal wealth than what is best for patients. The recent mergers of the last couple of years are making some executives very wealthy but the bigger company is still having problems developing and marketing new drugs (DUH!)

On Twitter today people are debating whether pharma should use real people in advertisements or models. I mean does it really matter ? Do you think that people are going to believe the ads anymore because they are using real people ? Do you think that ads really drive conversion today ? The reality is some do but 90% don’t because consumers don’t trust the drug industry. Yet pharma continues to spew out DTC ads and the network news has now become the pharma sponsored news.

Mr Meyer; I read your website this morning and have to say that you’re a breath of fresh air in an industry that needs new life and new thinking. As a medical professional I seek out the opinions of a lot of people within the industry but the relationships and the fear of people to really say what is on their minds is killing the drug industry. Eventually someone has to stand up and say the king is off his rocker but very very few want or can do this because they want to stay in the good graces of their clients. Well said and please continue to be a voice for people like us who want change.

What I am finding out today is that being a CEO does not necessarily mean you’re a good leader. It means you know the right people and have a great relationship with the board and Wall Street. Until that relationship is changed to having a good relationship with consumers and patients and inspiring staff too man will continue to live with bread and good beverage.

Read more from the original source
Man does not live by bread alone, often there must be a beverage

• BNET Pharma – Informercial Disorder: Discovery’s Female-Libido “Documentary” Backed By Female Sex-Pill Maker
• Crikey – Question over new s-x drug for women with low desire ‘disorder’

|As reported by DTC Perspectives, radio and outdoor “see largest increases in 2009 DTC promotion” (112% and 55%, respectively), whereas Internet spending (display ads only) saw a 31% increase. About 2.6% (a meager $117 MM) of pharma’s DTC ad spend budget in 2009 was devoted to Internet display ads (4.4% if you include search advertising, which is estimated to be about 40% of the total Internet spend). The following chart compares the 2009 mix with the 2008 mix.

Not much of a change.

Read more from the original source
DTC Marketing Mix: Radio & Outdoor Ad Spend Soars, Internet Not So Much.

If you think you are in control of your brand just take a look at what has happened to Avandia;

▪ An unpublished study, which has not been peer reviewed or objectively scrutinized, states that using Avandia has led to the possibility of over 48,000 deaths by heart attack.

▪ The FDA is still evaluating the “data” for Avandia and has not specifically recommended if the drug is safe for patients.

Now if you’re a physician who has prescribed Avandia and a patient comes to you and wants to know if it’s still safe to take what do you do ? You can tell the patient to stay on the medication in which case you risk litigation if the patient does have a heart attack or you can switch the patient to another drug which maybe less effective but has a better safety record. What do you think physicians are going to do if one of their patients asks them about taking Avandia ?

One only has to look back at what happened to Lilly’s blood thinner drug before it was even approved by the FDA to see that control over the brand is not necessarily in the hands of the drug company. Stories started to leak that the product caused death and bleeding in some patients and that Plavix was safer, and this was before Lilly even had a chance to present its data. Analysts when they heard this had already downgraded Lilly stock and a few months later the CEO retired and was replaced.

The FDA is supposed to consumers safety net for prescription drugs but trust in the FDA is also at an all time low. Most consumers do not do in depth research on what new studies mean they just read headlines because there is too much information out there and who the hell can understand the information anyway ?

Even if some medical studies are reviewed and found to be relevant the media then has to scrutinize the reviewers to determine their relationship with the pharma company and drug in question. God forbid that a physician can be an advocate for a drug and also have a relationship with a drug company as a thought leader. Surely “he/she is in the pocket of the pharma industry and is selling his/her soul for the drug company money!”

Of course the drug industry has not exactly had a sterling record when it comes to making data public. There have been too many instances that they have only released good data while minimizing or hiding the bad data. However today the FDA is requiring more clinical studies to approve drugs and even Aspirin probably would not be approved with todays clinical trials data requirements because of “bleeding”.

Welcome to the information world. A place where people take headlines as the truth and where social media can fan the flames of misinformation. If you still believe that you are in control of your brand there is some swamp land I want to sell you that would be perfect for your vacation home.

Social media can spread misinformation

Read more from the original source
Think you control your pharma brand ? Think again…

Read more here
Merck KGaA resubmits oral MS drug to FDA

• BBC – Flu experts ‘link’ to drug firms
• BusinessWeek – WHO’s Flu Advisors Got Payments From Roche, Glaxo, Report Finds

Even though megamergers are off the table, Lilly is seeing an increased number of deals. Lechleiter noted that it can be difficult to decide on an avenue to pursue. While diversity is essential, Lilly will look to expansion in areas congruent with its animal- and human-health model, which includes companion diagnostics and drug delivery technology. “I think any diversification would have to be in an adjacent space,” Lechleiter said. Additionally, the pharma will continue its biotech makeover; currently, 40 percent of Lilly’s pipeline is made up of biologics, and the CEO sees a greater portion of its development efforts focused on biotech in the future. 

- read the WSJ report for more

Related Articles:
Lilly chief: Megamergers ‘driven by weakness’
Lilly chief vows to create lean, mean drug-making machine
Eli Lilly sets out to rewrite the R&D playbook
Eli Lilly to spur R&D in top-to-bottom revamp

Read the original here
Lilly CEO: Looking for deals, but not megamergers

Charles River Laboratories (NYSE: CRL) defended its $1.6 billion purchase of much-smaller WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX) Monday, even though the transaction will bring only incremental profit growth in the near term. According to CEO James C. Foster, WuXi gives Charles River a major foothold in China, a significant market for CRO services. Plus, the purchase takes Charles River into a new business sector: early-stage drug discovery.

Foster’s comments were carried in a Boston Globe article that gave background to the purchase in Charles River’s home base of Boston (see story).

Complete Story »

By Michael Fitzhugh

Astellas Pharma (ALPMF.PK), Japan’s second-largest drugmaker, is paying $4 billion for OSI Pharmecuticals (OSIP) and its profitable cancer medicine, Tarceva. The pricey victory is a triple-win for Astellas, likely to bolster its revenue, geographic base, and pipeline.

Complete Story »

Complete Story »

Read more here
Washington U gets second look at Pfizer molecules

A whopping 8 out of 10 executives among the group of 381 polled believe that Big Pharma does not have the internal R&D resources needed to overcome the approaching loss of revenue as blockbusters lose patent protection. And that figure is closely related to the 7 out of 10 who see a wave of new acquisitions ahead. That’s a particularly significant sentiment for innovative biotech companies, which often groom themselves for an M&A deal with a deep-pocket pharma outfit.

“Pharmaceutical companies may now have confidence and the support of institutional investors to press ahead with acquisitions although at this stage, selecting the right acquisition targets will be critical to their future R&D success,” says Gareth Williams, a partner at Marks & Clerk. “This may explain the 84% who believe the market is now confident to plough forward with strategic collaborations–they are determined to cherry-pick the best targets, while increasing reliance on patent term extensions buys them some vital time ahead of making a move. What is being predicted is not necessarily driven so much by desire as urgency.”

- here’s the story from Dow Jones (subs req.)

Related Articles:
Big Pharma tries to think like a biotech while reengineering R&D
Biotech inspired $295B in M&A deals over the last decade
Big Pharma paying more for new biotech deals
Pharma M&A: 10 years, 1345 deals, $694B

Read more here
Biopharma execs predict a big spike in M&A deals

To coin a L’Oréal phrase, in the eyes of Astellas Pharma (ALPMF.PK), OSI Pharmaceuticals (OSIP) is definitely ‘worth it’. Having conducted its due diligence of OSI’s private books, Astellas Sunday raised its original hostile offer of $52 cash per share to an accepted bid of $57.50 cash per share, valuing the deal at $4bn, the second biggest overseas acquisition by a Japanese pharma company.

Big sighs of relief all round then at Astellas, who failed to land CV Therapeutics last year and adopted a slightly risky approach to bidding for OSI. But it now looks set to increase its presence in the US market and gain a portfolio of marketed and pipeline cancer drugs, most notably lung cancer drug Tarceva. As for OSI, some ambitious shareholders will be disappointed with the price as the stock reached $59.80 on Friday, but given that the offer is a 55% premium overall and equivalent to a five-year high, they should be more than happy.

Complete Story »

“During the Bankruptcy Court supervised process, we remain committed to continuing to promote

Jonathan Richman over at Dose of Digital blog  (of Pharma/HC Social Media Wiki fame) worked very hard to implement the first-ever Dosie Awards. According to Jon, “the Dosie awards were created to find the best examples of social media in pharma and healthcare. The nominees for the awards were drawn from the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki.”

This week at the BDI conference (more on that later), I was utterly surprised and honored to win the Gold Dosie for Best Industry Observer Blog. Click here for the full list of winners).
But here’s the problem:

While I enjoy writing ePharma Rx and hope people in the industry get a lot out of it, it is by no means the best example out there of a pharma industry observer blog.

It’s honestly a little embarrassing. ePharma Rx beat out the Wall Street Journal health blog? Really? It’s better than Jon’s own ever-prolific Dose of Digital or John Mack’s controversial Pharma Marketing Blog? Or the snazzy Pixels and Pills? Sally’s smart-and-sciency Pharma Strategy Blog? Shwen’s early example of Med 2.0? Steve Woodruff’s thoughtful Impactiviti? Pharmalot, RoskaDigital? Or the hundreds of other industry blogs out there? Honey I don’t think so.

I’m not just trying to be coy. I really believe each and every blog has its own unique style and merits. The diversity is what’s so great about blogs, right?

ePharma Rx launched in Sept. 2008 (first post here) as kind of an outlet and experiment. It honestly hasn’t changed much sense then – still on the Blogger platform and still the same old Blogger graphic template! We’ve talked a lot about changing it up. But (fortunately?!) client work keeps us busy – so here it sits – looking like it’s been beat up by the digital ugly stick, despite our best intentions to “give it a facelift someday.”

It’s not optimized. I don’t have all the latest and greatest gadgets. I don’t follow our own best practices on blogging and I go through spurts of time when I don’t post for weeks. I don’t even have a cute logo like Dose of Digital’s pixel-chomping dude or Pixels and Pills’ rockin’ purple capsule.

There’s just not much to it – except for the content itself. And there are plenty of “industry observer” blogs that have great content.

But the Dosie Awards were determined purely by “People’s Choice” voting, and the Dosie Awards were about social media and word of mouth in action. Read Jon’s findings from the awards experiement.

To Jon’s point, it IS social media in action. Everyone had the same opportunities to mobilize, tell people about the contest, and guide people to vote. What if the Wall Street Journal had published a “vote for our blog in the 2010 Dosie’s!” post?

Then they would be the one writing this post – not me!

All that said, I am proud to display my gold “Dosie” badge of honor, as a tribute to word of mouth and social media. .

And I’m sending a huge and humble “thanks” from this blogger to everyone who supports ePharma Rx in ways big and small – and apparently to the many, many of you that voted for it in the Dosie Awards.  I truly find joy in meeting and hearing from you each and every day.

Cheers and thanks again.

Read more from the original source
Best Industry Observer Blog? Really? (not a chance)

Whether you’re new to Twitter, new to pharma, or just looking to expand your horizons, pharma-related Twitter feeds can be an infinite source of news and views on the industry. Below I’ve rounded up a few of my favorite lists as a resource for readers.

You can use this “list of lists” to find new people to follow, make new contacts, and otherwise stay in the know on all things pharma. I am sure there are more out that I missed – if so, feel free to let me know!

• 50 Best Pharma Feeds for Twitter News – This is brand-new and actually inspired the idea for this post. Hosted on a site dedicated to those interested in Pharmacy Technician Certification, it’s a nice roundup of pharma-related tweeps organized by categories.
• Impactiviti’s Social Rx – Well-connected pharma social maven Steve Woodruff provides a long list of pharma people active in social networking (with links to both blogs and Twitter accounts).
• TweetList – From TweepML, this list of pharma and biotech tweeps makes it super-easy to select & follow everyone at once.
• 1,001 Remarkable People to Follow on Twitter – Phil Baumann rounds up a list of pharma people to follow on Twitter, plus a good Twitter primer. Don’t worry – the list is really a little shorter than 1,001, but he gets credit for the clever attention-grabbing title!
• Top 24 Pharma Tweeps – Ignite Labs provides a nice widget for following who they consider the top 24 pharma people to follow on Twitter. Flattered to be included!

Update:
Bonus! Here are two other Twitter resources I’ve received positive feedback for publishing in the past:

•  Pharma Co’s Who’ve Found Their Voice on Twitter – A list of pharma co’s using Twitter along with some basic Twitter statistics.
•  Celebrating Pharma Women on Twitter - A salute to the top (in my humble opinion) pharma-related women tweeters.

Read more here
Pharma Tweet Feed Roundup

“The acquisition of Aton fits into our long-term strategy to pursue diversified opportunities within the pharmaceutical market and offers us another platform for future growth,” said J. Michael Pearson, chairman and CEO. “With a business that has historically grown over 30 percent on an annual basis, and operating margins around 35 percent, along with a solid pipeline of niche products under development, we now have significantly strengthened our neuro and other business which we expect to drive significant value for shareholders.”

Lawrenceville, NJ-based Aton develops drugs for ophthalmology and other conditions. Valeant announced five days ago that it is buying Canada’s Vital Science Corp. The company bought two Brazilian pharma companies in April and struck a commercial collaboration deal with Spear Pharmaceuticals for a wrinkle treatment at the beginning of March.

Valeant also announced that its Q1 earnings jumped 15 percent in the first quarter. Income from continuing operations was $35.6 million.

By Marie Daghlian

Global contract research services firm Charles River Laboratories (CRL) is expanding its presence in China with the acquisition of WuXi PharmaTech (WX), a major drug research and development outsourcing company with expertise in discovery chemistry and operations in both China and the United States. The $1.6 billion cash and stock deal will expand the global reach and growth opportunities for both companies.

Complete Story »

Adam Feuerstein’s take on the Rexahn clinical data (which I spoke about here). He’s not all that impressed, either, to put it delicately.

Big Pharma bonds getting downgraded – orrg. Smaller companies tend to raise more money with equity, but debt financing gets more and more important as time goes on, so this isn’t a good sign.

“DTC marketers can’t afford the luxury of waiting to see how many people purchase an iPad they have to start experimenting with app development and marketing NOW,” says Rich Meyer over at World of DTC Marketing Blog.

The best example of an iPad DTC app Meyer could think of, however, was a cookbook for people with diabetes. As if the world needed a new diabetes cookbook!

I have an iPad and am enjoying it. I have even used it when cooking — propped up on my kitchen counter next to the chicken parts. But I used the browser to find a recipe for BBQ ribs — there were hundreds to choose from. I don’t need an app for that. I assume the Internet is also full of recipes suitable for people with diabetes.

But Rich was probably thinking of something more useful. Something like Sanofi-Aventis’s GoMeals app developed for the iPhone/iPod.

MM&M noted that “Sanofi-Aventis S-A is promoting it through outreach to diabetes bloggers as well as tactical advertising, such as banners on diabetes sites, and to the patient community through third-party orgs. As of December 2009 it was the seventh-most-popular app in the free health and fitness section of Apple’s iTunes Store.”

I downloaded GoMeals for my iPod and used it to find restaurants in my area. You can compare the nutritional value of different restaurant menus and keep track of your own meals. It’s very useful for all of us, not just for people who have diabetes. BTW, I| “forgot” to use the GoMeals app to calculate the nutritional value of my BBQ ribs.

When I used GoMeals on my iPad to find restaurants in my area, it crashed. At first I thought it was because my iPad was not GPS-equipped, but “Mic” said that iPad does have GPS (see comments) — and he’s right! Google Earth knows where I am! At least within 100 yards of where I am. Anyway, S-A needs to fix this problem and develop an iPad version. But is it worth the effort?

The GoMeals app has absolutely no marketing ROI for S-A. It may only be one part of an overall marketing plan to position S-A as a player in the diabetes area. Dennis Urbaniak, S-A’s new VP of U.S. Diabetes, was previously Vice President of Innovation and New Customer Channels. No doubt Urbaniak was involved in developing the GoMeals app. BTW, listen to my Pharma Marketing Talk interview of Urbaniak: “What Sanofi-Aventis Learned from Its FaceBook Experience & What the Experts Recommend It Do Now.”

Geoff McCleary, a mobile and tablet computing expert and vice president of strategy for imc2 health & wellness, suggested these consumer-oriented apps for the iPad that pharma marketers should develop:

• Weekly/monthly health eMagazine for disease state information
• 3D, touch interactive MOAs for disease or treatment education
• Branded support program materials delivered weekly or daily
• Social media-based content for brands or disease groups

How much disease state information can a monthly eMagazine publish and how would an iPad app be better than opening your email and a browser? We don’t need an app for that. Same with branded support programs and social media-based content.

How about a “3D, touch interactive” MOA animation for Viagra or YAZ? Now those are pharma apps I’d like to see on my iPad!

You can find McCleary’s white paper, “Considering the Apple iPad™ for Pharma Marketing,” which has other ideas for apps — including physician-oriented apps — here.

P.S. The real marketing value of iPad is iAds, just announced by Apple’s Steve Jobs (see “Apple Unveils iAd, iPhone 4.0“). iAds are “in-app” ads served up while you are using a “free” app like GoMeals, which does not have any advertising. Personally, I believe in-app ads are annoying, but if the app is valuable, I will put up with them. For pharma, the hard part will be coming up with truly useful apps.

Read more from the original source
The iPad as a Pharma Marketing Platform

• Does it mean it’s the year marketers fully embrace digital?
• Does it mean it’s the year FDA provides added guidance on digital and social marketing?
• Or does it mean it’s the year digital marketing peaks and begins to decline?

But won’t 2010 be the year of social media marketing? And who are the people that proclaim these things anyway???

(By the way, Google had proclaimed 2009 would be “the year of online;” do you think they were right? But I digress…)

I prefer to look at 2010 as the year that pharmaceutical marketers are looking at digital marketing with a focus equal to or greater than other marketing and advertising means. Evidence of this shift can be found in several places:

• Industry pub MedAdNews/PharmaLive has recently launched a digital email newsletter called DotPharma, purely focused on pharma eMarketing. The first issue explained “DotPharma will focus on tactics pharmaceutical marketers are using to reach patients and healthcare professionals, including closed-loop marketing, social media, e-mail marketing, and mobile marketing.” A publication I consider to be one more steeped in a traditional advertising focus (as evidenced by advertisers, articles, and Manny Awards categories), it seems MedAdNews is discovering the digital age. Well done! Visit their opt-in page to check it out.
• Another industry publication for pharma marketers, PM360, has decided that instead of doing a separate eMarketing supplement this year, they will combine it into the rest of the publication. Anna Stashower, President and Publisher of the magazine, explained, “E-marketing, Digital Marketing, and Mobile Marketing are way too important to separate from the main issue and compete with it.”
• And, if you’ve noticed, all of the pharma marketing media are asking deeper questions and writing articles about the marketing mix within the digital channel, instead of the past focus of digital as separate from everything else.
• Social media marketing (which, of course, all happens within the digital space) for Pharma is in full-swing. With the recent explosion of pharmaceutical companies on Twitter, and new social media campaigns launching every week, it’s practically gone mainstream. And following FDA’s hearing on digital and social marketing last year, we hope to get some guidance by the end of this one.
• The advertising industry as a whole has suffered immensely during these past recession years. Cross-industry old-school publications such as Advertising Age have tracked ad industry layoffs and budget cuts as if the end was nigh. But in our experience (as a reminder, our experience is (1) Pharma and (2) Digital), 2009 meant that print and TV budgets may have been cut, but many digital budgets actually grew.

Of course, TV, print, radio, direct mail, etc. are not going away, and they will always be part of a balanced marketing mix depending on your brand and your audience. And yes, we still have some work to do to get pharma where it’s using the digital channel to its full potential to reach both consumers and professionals.

But I am happy to see the industry shift toward digital spend and focus, at long last matching up to digital consumption by its stakeholders. How about you?

We keep seeing a lot of data about the number of people using the Internet for health but how many people really have an understanding of why so many people are going online for health information ? Sure consumers want to be empowered patients but they also can be afraid and want to know what others have experienced as they struggled to overcome the challenges of managing their health.

As a reporter in the NY Times recently said after experiencing ED because of prostate surgery & cancer:

To me, the ads for the magic pills (ED pills) never seem to strike quite the right note. The men often look as furtive as teenagers buying condoms. And the narrators are hushed and ominous, like the voice-over in a campaign attack ad. In the popular mind, manhood and womanhood have become ever more confused with the sexual act. But manhood isn’t about prodigious feats of lovemaking or how many partners you can bed. There are no official standings. True manhood is about love and kindness. It’s about responsibility and honor, about working hard and raising your children the best way you know how, with love, respect and discipline.

Do you think any of the current branded ED spots address his needs ? Of course not because they are trying to position the drugs to a wider audience. They know that probably 80% of the men who take Viagra, Levitra or Cialis don’t have the medical definition of ED. They take it because it gives them confidence and they don’t understand that as men age they require more sexual stimulation for intimacy.

These two insights from patients offer a great glimpse of what health information seekers want. They want to know what is going to happen before it happens so they can evaluate their healthcare options. They want reassurance because physicians today treat conditions rather than patients and often don’t have the time to talk to patients in a human tone of voice.

Every year there are a lot of pharma marketing summits and seminars and every year the same old insights with DTC marketers presenting Power Points and patting themselves on the back even though trust in the pharma industry continues to wain. If the pharma industry is going to earn the trust of consumers it has to refocus on patients and their emotional needs and wants rather than listing to what the sales people and fiance people want.

What Would Steve Jobs Do?

What Would Google Do?

What Would Jake and Rocket Do?

These are champs.

What would a ‘new marketing’ champ do in Pharma and Healthcare?

Here are 9 imperatives I see for Pharma Marketers as we enter 2010 and a new decade:

1.  Adopt human-centered thinking across everything you do. Both Steve Jobs and Google share a relentless focus on knowing and pleasing their core customer – the consumer. No detail is ignored if it brings value. Importantly, these champs don’t think of consumers sporadically or when it’s convenient, but in every decision and action they take.  The customer experience is front and center from beginning to the end.Pharma and Healthcare marketers: are patients at the center of everything you do? Really? As Steve Jobs might ask, are you taking full responsibility for your patient/e-patient user experience? Are you thinking about every touch along the treatment pathway, that is no longer a straight linear line, but made of multiple touches, information and influences often hitting at once and with circular repetition? (You may also want to read: Is Your Brand Patient-Centered? 5 Critical Success Factors)

2. Get outta town. Experience and see what your patients see. What are your patients’ challenges? How could you help? How can you insure that learning is turned into action back in the office? Who should ‘own’ a particular learning or insight and see it through? Pharma and Healthcare Marketers: is listening and learning part of your everyday doings? What are consumers and patients saying about you? your product? your service? What are they saying on twitter? Facebook? patient communities? How are patients rating your brand on sites such as iGuard? (You may also want to read Jonathan Richman’s Dose of Digital blog: The Best Pharma Products According to Patients)

3. Simplify. Challenge your product and marketing design: Is it simple enough? Simplify your products and services; simplify your customers’ lives; simplify your own life…Create simple experiences.  Think about starting a search on Google…or picking up an iPod…Pharma and Healthcare Marketers: During every step of product development and marketing planning: stop and ask yourself: If Steve Jobs was the Product Manager on this, what would he do? Is the design and implementation  of your product/program flawless?

4. Embrace publicness and openness. Transform your relationship with the public in every quarter of the organization.  You may extend this new relationship in many ways from blogging, interacting with bloggers and e-Patients, participating in twitter or Facebook, customer service and sharing ideas.  Overtime, you may even truly involve customers in the real-time design process for products and/or services…But ‘publicness’ is much more than having a web site. It’s about taking actions in public so people can see what you do and react to it, make suggestions, and tell their friends.  Living in public is a matter of enlightened self interest. You have to be public to be found. Every time you decide not to make something public, you create the risk of a customer not finding you or not trusting you because you’re keeping secrets….the more public you are, the easier you can be found, the more opportunities your have…(Read Privacy (and Publicness) by Jeff Jarvis Buzz Machine)

5. Don’t try to control content and distribution, and think about how you can bring your customers ‘elegant organization’. First, think in distributor ways.  Go to your consumer whenever and however you can.  This is still the opposite of many companies who continue to think centralized and want to make consumers come to them.  They spend large dollars to advertise to attract consumers.  Many try to make their home pages into destinations.  In sum, while many internet sites think of themselves as an end–Google thinks of itself as a means.  While many see the job of their home page to take you to where they want you to go, Google sees its home page as the way to get you to where you want to go.  Google distributes itself.  Google enables others to use tools as they wish. Think of your site as ‘answers for every question you can imagine’.

Second, it will also be helpful to think about ‘elegant organization’ as Jeff Jarvis outlined in What Would Google Do?–Mark Zuckerberg originally coined the phrase to stress that communities already exist… As marketers, entrepreneurs and technologists, we can benefit from these communities by providing them with elegant organization. Help them do what they are already doing better.  Pharma: how can you aggregate and curate useful and valuable content for your patients/ customers? How can you replace focus on mass market with focus on mass of niches? And how can you provide helpful content consistently?

6. Think mobile. Engage real-time with your customers 24/7. Mobile doesn’t have to be just about apps; consider the value of texting, geolocators, and/or the use of quick response (QR) codes for simplification…

7. Takers may eat well, but givers sleep well. While most will wait for the FDA guidelines to be published for social media and web, some will move forward to listen, learn and to “give as well as to take.” There are still opportunities for Pharma to learn, and support patients and their communities, especially if Pharma starts to see themselves not only as products, but as a service, a platform, a means to enabling others. The bottom line: help your patients (and customers) build value. One new example may be the launch of the new Patients Like Me Epilepsy Community in Partnership with UCB. (While UCB is a client, I have nothing to do with their epilepsy business.)

8. Do one thing really really well–focus on what’s most important.  Each champ does one thing really, really well.  Google never loses sight of what search means to their business strategy, and in their continuous focus for improvement of search, it continually spurs other applications and new products/services. Apple never loses site of flawless and simple design for maximum consumer appeal. Jake and Rocket for Life is Good always stay close to their roots of humor and humility. What does your company or brand do really well? Where can you focus resources to continually innovate?

9. Raise Your Bar. Good isn’t good enough. If you don’t think it would pass Steve Job’s bar, then don’t let it pass yours…Or you can think like Google: being great is a starting point, not an endpoint. But as Steve Jobs says, Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Welcome to the new decade of new-marketing–any other imperatives that you’d like to add or delete from this list? Please do share!

“. . .Still significant value in Pharma – we see material upside to ROIC return on invested capital, earnings and multiples as Pharma withdraws from most internal small-molecule research and reallocates capital to in-licensing and other non-pharma assets. Worsening generic pressure and R&D management changes lead us to expect material cuts to internal small research spend (~40% total R&D) in 2010/11, after a decade of dismal internal R&D returns. We expect AstraZeneca and Sanofi-Aventis to be among the leaders in externalizing research, and this is a key driver of our upgrade of AstraZeneca today to Overweight.

Reinvestment of internal research savings into in-licensing will yield three times the likely return, we calculate. Under in-licensing deals, downside risk for pharma companies is currently materially lower than for internally developed drugs. Although upside is also capped by pay-aways and milestone obligations, the net present value of these payments is more than offset by the lower risk-adjusted invested capital. Over one-third of pharma R&D spend is in pre-phase II, where the probability of reaching the market is <10%. our proprietary analysis indicates that, unless the probability of an in-house molecule reaching the market is 30% or more, the risk-adjusted economic value added, or eva, is three times higher under the external research model, with a greater predictability."

It could be said in fewer words, but it’s all there. If you’re looking for the reason the big companies are doing what they’re doing, look no further. Agree with it or not, there’s a case to be made – and there’s Morgan Stanley, making it – that the cost of running new drug projects in big pharma is just too high relative to the risks of failure. Those returns, in fact, are calculated to be off by a factor of three.

You may not believe that factor, and I have to say, I found it hard to believe myself. But let’s say the Morgan Stanley folks have their numbers off. Perhaps it’s only twice as profitable to bring in outside drugs as it is to develop them internally. Don’t believe that one, either? Maybe it’s only 25% more profitable – can you imagine making a move that would increase your company’s return on investment by 25%? Industries get remade by such changes at the margin, and this one is remaking ours. Why do we have any internal R&D left at all, if those figures are anywhere near right?

Well, no one’s tried to run a large company entirely by in-licensing, and I think that there are a lot of reasons why that wouldn’t work. (For one thing, I don’t think that there are enough things to in-license, and if one or more large companies announced that they were doing that exclusively, the price of each deal would go right up). And there needs to be some internal expertise left, if only to evaluate those external drug candidates to make sure you’re not being taken. But still. All this means is that internal R&D will stay around, but it has to get cheaper and will very likely get smaller.

We can argue about the assumptions behind all this, but there’s no doubt that a compelling business case can be made for this world view. Anyone who wants to argue differently – and a lot of us do – will have to come up with solid numbers and reasoning for why it just ain’t so. I’m not sure such numbers exist.

There are many corollaries to this line of thought. One of them – and I hate to bring this up, considering all the horrible layoff news recently – is that one of the most psychologically comforting theories that we in R&D have for our present fix is likely wrong. I refer to the “Evil Clueless MBA CEO” theory, which has its satisfactions, but is a hazardous way to think. It is always dangerous to assume that people who do things you disagree with are doing them because they’re just idiots or because they’re innately malicious. In general, I’d say that the first explanation to jettison is malice, followed by stupidity (Hanlon’s Razor). What that leaves you with is that these actions, stupid and malicious though they may appear, are probably being done for reasons that appear valid to the people doing them. I know, I know – some of these reasons are things like “So I can keep my high-paying CEO job”, and we can’t ignore that one. But a good way to lose a high-paying CEO job is to try to tell your board of directors (and your shareholders) why you’re going to pass up an opportunity to get three times your ROIC.

Another thing to think about is, if these cost estimates are right, how did we get here? The best reason I can think of for such a disparity is that small companies (the source of these in-licensed drugs and projects) are often betting their entire existence on these ideas. They are very strongly motivated to do whatever they can do to get them to work (sometimes a bit too motivated, but that risk is already factored in), and if things don’t pan out, they usually disappear. Basically, the in-licensing world unloads the risk from the large pharma company (and its shareholders) onto the investors in the smaller ones. The cost disparity will exist for as long as people are willing to back smaller companies. Now, this isn’t to say that the big companies are always going to do a great job picking what to bring in. We’ve been talking a lot, for example, about the GSK-Sirtris deal, and that one may or may not work out. But the idea of doing big in-licensing deals in general – that’s a different story, no matter how any individual company manages to execute it.

What that also means is that more of us are going to end up working for those smaller companies (which is something that I, and several commenters around here, have been saying for a while). If the large pharma outfits are going to devote more money to in-licensing, there will then be more opportunities for people developing things for them to in-license. The rough part is that all these structural changes in the drug industry are taking place (largely by coincidence, I think) during economic conditions which make funding such companies difficult.

And then there’s the internal cost-cutting, for the R&D that’s actually staying at the big companies. That, of course, generally means sending a lot of it to China, or wherever else it can be done more cheaply. And that’s going to continue as long as it can indeed be done more cheaply, which means “not forever”. Costs are already rising in China and India, although they have a good ways to go before they catch up to the US and Europe. I know that we can argue about how well that whole idea is going to work – there are clearly inefficiencies to doing a lot of your work through outsourcing, but as long as those don’t eat up all the cost savings, it’s still going to keep happening.

This, as a side note, is why I think that one of the suggestions that gets floated here in the comments from time to time, the idea of forming a “medicinal chemist’s union”, is completely useless. Unions form when workers have the leverage to preserve a higher-cost business model. In the end, the big industrial concerns of the early 20th century had to have workers, and they had to have them in certain locations, so the unions always had the threat of going on strike. At attempt to lower the boom under these conditions would result in everything going to China, and damned quickly.

So. . .what’s happening to us, and to our industry, is not really mysterious. Our cost structure does not look to be supportable, and since there are cheaper alternatives that appear to be feasible, those will get tried. The disruption and destruction that all this is causing is real, of course. But the best I can offer is to try to understand what’s driving all this upheaval, because that might help people to figure out how to protect their own jobs or where to jump next. Everyone has to give this some serious thought, because I don’t see any reason why all this won’t keep going on for some time to come.

But Kenneth “Eric” Milgram, Ph.D., former Director, Systems Biology Technologies at Wyeth, has a different point of view. Dr. Milgram believes that the current merger & acquisition frenzy in the pharmaceutical industry will short-circuit R&D. Of course, Dr. Milgram is not a disinterested party, having been laid off due to the acquisition of Wyeth by Pfizer.

“Why is it that a high-end grocery store like Wegman’s can go 94 years without having any layoffs and almost every month you hear about layoffs in the pharmaceutical industry?” asks Milgram.

Here’s the answer:

According to a DataMonitor report, twenty-two large-scale M&A events (defined as those valued above $5 billion) will have occurred within Big Pharma over the period 1995 to 2014. In this same period, Big Pharma prescription pharmaceutical sales are forecast to increase from $84 billion to $381 billion. Two-thirds of Big Pharma sales growth over a 20-year period (1995 to 2014) will be driven entirely by M&A activity, according to this report.

But at what cost to future innovation? And at what cost to employee morale?

You can hear Dr. Milgram’s opinions about what happens to pharmaceutical companies when they put Wall Street expectations ahead of science-driven innovation in this Live Pharma Marketing Talk podcast interview scheduled for Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 2 PM (Eastern US).

Eric Milgram is a formally trained analytical chemist with more than 10 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Most recently, he was Director of Systems Biology Technologies for Wyeth, where he managed groups in Collegeville, PA and Cambridge, MA. Eric is currently the owner of Applied Scientific Consulting, which helps clients mitigate technology related risks.

Eric is also and the creator of the Pharma Conduct blog

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Is M&A Frenzy Short-Circuiting Pharma R&D?

All of this social media hype can backfire. People get excited and sensational statements are made. Marketers get overzealous and over-sell social media to their managers and regulatory folks. At some point, “social media hype fatigue” will set in, if it hasn’t already. It is our responsibility to control the hype so social media can be looked upon with level heads by all.

I guess some people are just kinda tired of talking about or hearing about social media. Who can blame them? I think if we had a graph of the peak of social media hype in the pharma industry, it would have plateaued last November around the time of the FDA Hearings. With the next round of spring conferences coming up (I’ll be at ePharma Summit next week. You?), I expect the discussion to continue. I always appreciate real case studies and real examples of how the pharmaceutical industry has effectively used social media to reach its customers (patients and HCPs).

We’ve been talking about social media to our clients literally for years, but recently we’ve seen a positive shift in the level of interest. That is, many of our current and prospective clients (and their legal/reg. teams) are turning a corner and realizing the opportunity could be a reality. And maybe that’s a result of always trying to approach the social media discussion in the context of strategy, integration, and measurable results — not hype. Hype’s just not our style.

We’ve been talking internally at Intouch, too, about the future of social media in the context of our pharma marketing services. Our agency’s growing Emerging Media Practice consults with clients and the rest of our agency on social and other emerging media, such as mobile.

Eventually, will social move “out” of the emerging media classification and become a mainstream core competency of everyone in marketing? It might take awhile, but it’s possible. Still, I believe we’ll continue to need deep-dive specialists like we currently have in search, online media, usability, applications, mobile, analytics, CRM, etc. Everyone can’t know everything.

Will the hype die down and social media become just another key component of integrated marketing and public affairs campaigns? I sure hope so.

Much of that depends on what FDA will have to say.

______________________________________

Past posts on the relationship between social media and the hype factor:

Is it really all about social?

Giving your brands lots of legs online

The pharma-sponsonsered online communities of 10 years ago

I think that this is due to many factors such as:

1. the vast majority of Drug raps did not get the right skills and knowledge about drugs and body system

2. Big Pharma’s prime objective was profit maximisation, which is understandable, but now is just old fashion

3. During the last years so many mistake has been mad by drug companies, such as Vioxx and many other which harmed and killed people: as a result shame and blame on Big Pharma and share price/trust spiralled down

You absolutely right when you are talking about adherence, but big Pharma need to understand the difference among, Compliance, Pesistence, Concordance and adherence.

We did a research project: The role of community pharmacists in facilitating the best use of medicines (How if Pharmacist implement adherence in EUROPE).

We Survey pharmacists in three countries, UK, Switzerland and Italy, and our results are in line with your thoughts, adherence is missing the vast majority of the time, because the lack of knowledge and awareness.

The top Guys which are heading Big Pharma need to step back, and reflect on the fact that now the play time is over.

The game is going to be very serious for us and for them.

Collaboration, trust and real involvement will be the competitive advantage for the future to come.

I would like to thank you very much for sharing your presentation which help my research area as well.

Andrea Manfrin

Clinical Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice

Medway School of Pharmacy

University of Kent and Greenwich at Medway

Anson Building Rom A109

Central Avenue

Chatham Maritime

Kent ME4 4TB

Phone 01634 202 948

www.msp.ac.uk

I’ve put together about 35 of my favorite Pharma Marketing Blog images with some written commentary about each image and the date of publication in the following album, which can be viewed as a slide show. Enjoy!

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – 2009 in Images from Pharma Marketing Blog

My Twitter pal Jonathan Richman (@jonmrich) just tweeted this:

“Social media for pharma is like space exploration is today: you can’t go far now, but you do it in order to be ready for tomorrow”

I love analogies and have even used one of my own in the context of explaining how pharma is approaching social media. See “A ‘Hubble’ View Into the Pharma Cosmos” where I suggested that somewhere in the vast cosmos there is a pharmaceutical industry and an FDA similar to ours, with one difference: that pharma industry has learned how to truly use social media to engage and have “human” conversations with patients.

Back to Jonathan’s analogy. In response, I tweeted “A human hasn’t walked on the moon since I was in graduate school! R U implying that is fate of pharma social media usage?”

So far the best space exploration we’ve done is to send robots to planets and analyze what is found there. That’s equivalent to pharma marketers lurking in social media sites and analyzing what they find there.

Space exploration, like social media, requires that humans actually participate in the adventure, not just send in the robot clowns!

If pharma’s use of social media is like space exploration, then I don’t expect much human participation in social media until more than 30 years have elapsed.

Just some random thoughts.

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – If Social Media for Pharma is like Space Exploration, How Far Will It Go and How Long Will It Take?

]]> http://www.pharma-marketer.com/weekly-roundup-121809/feed/ 0 http://www.pharma-marketer.com/a-blogroll-update/ http://www.pharma-marketer.com/a-blogroll-update/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:27:04 +0000 Pharma Marketer http://www.pharma-marketer.com.php5-4.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/a-blogroll-update/ I’ve gone through the blogroll, clearing out inactive sites and adding new ones. So welcome to Med-Chemist, Chemical Crystallinity,
Synthetic Nature, , Chiral Jones, and P212121!

And I’ve also added another category for chemistry and pharma database sites. There you’ll find a quick way to access the copious piles of information from Drugbank, Emolecules, ChemSpider, PubChem, DailyMed, Druglib, and Clinicaltrials.gov.

As always, if I’ve left a blog (or your blog!) off the list, drop me an e-mail and let me know about it. If it’s of potential interest to the readership here, on it goes.

According to the 2007 National Diabetes Fact Sheet (the most recent year for which data is available): 23.6 million children and adults in the United States– or 7.8% of the population — have diabetes. And another 57 million people are Pre-diabetes. Sadly, 1.6 million new cases of diabetes are diagnosed in people aged 20 years and older each year.

And based on recent survey results released by the American Diabetes Association (in conjunction with Harris Interactive), Americans earn a failing grade on diabetes awareness and knowledge. In general, Americans earned a 51% when asked a series of questions about a disease so common that it strikes every 20 seconds. The survey results revealed that many diabetes myths and misconceptions still exist, while the disease’s prevalence continues to rise.

Myth: Diabetes is not that serious of a disease.

When asked to rank which disease (diabetes, breast cancer, AIDS) was responsible for the greatest number of U.S. deaths each year, not even half of respondents chose diabetes (42%).

Fact: Diabetes causes more deaths a year than breast cancer and AIDS combined.  Two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke.

A Brief Celebration of National Diabetes Month and some of the interesting and meaningful efforts to help stop the growth of diabetes.

Since November is National Diabetes Month, and in honor of my Dad, a Type II diabetic struggling with it’s complications, outlined below are 12 efforts that are trying to make a real difference with diabetes awareness, education and action. I’ve also highlighted some new people that I’ve had a chance to meet recently at two conferences: Digital Pharma and e-Patient Connections.  While certainly not exhaustive, these twelve efforts work hard to teach, engage or learn (not in any particular order):

Stop Diabetes:  As America earns failing grades with respect to diabetes awareness, The American Diabetes Association launches a movement:  Stop Diabetes to help people share, act and learn. 

The ADA is launching multi-media public service announcements that feature real people who have diabetes, and using social media to help spread the word. They’re hoping the personal stories of people with diabetes will inspire others to join the movement, volunteer to help stop diabetes, and learn more about the disease. To help get people involved, a list of events celebrating American Diabetes Month can be seen here.

“Unfortunately, numerous myths about diabetes exist, making it difficult for people to believe the science-based facts, as fear inspiring as they may be.  Denial of diabetes and the promotion of inaccurate information, full of stereotypes and stigma, do not serve anyone well.  The Association’s Stop Diabetes campaign aims to put a halt to this lack of awareness and misinformation so we can change the direction of diabetes prevalence in this country.” -American Diabetes Association

The Big Blue Test on World Diabetes Day: November 14 is World Diabetes Day. On that day, at 14:00 hours (local time), thousands of people with diabetes will test their blood sugar, do 14 minutes of exercise, test again and share their results onTuDiabetes or on Twitter (use the #bigblue hash tag) and link back to: http://bigbluetest.org/.  ReadDiabetesMine’s take on the event.

The Big Blue Test: World Diabetes Day (Watch Video)

Lilly’s Life for a Child documentary: The award-winning documentary will make its world television debut on the Sundance Channel on World Diabetes Day – Nov. 14, 2009, at 8 p.m. EST/PST.  Directed by Academy Award(R) nominee Edward Lachman, the film follows the journeys of children with type 1 diabetes amid the verdant mountains and swarming streets of Nepal, one the world’s poorest countries. The children are supported with life-saving medication and care by the International Diabetes Federation’s (IDF) Life for a Child Program.

The Life for a Child film was produced by IDF, the world’s leading diabetes advocacy organization, and Eli Lilly, to raise awareness of the devastating impact of diabetes and increase support for the Life for a Child Program. It will be presented in association with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the world’s largest charitable funder of type 1 diabetes research. (This is also part of a bigger initiative for Lilly atLillydiabetes.com)

(Click on image below to watch full version video)

Sanofi-aventis‘ Goinsulin.com: A comprehensive and well designed site with a good mix of content and interactivity using real stories/video, polls, games and a customizable doctor discussion guide to help engage and educate patients and caregivers, with links to YouTube. (Also the recent winner of a Gold Award for Best Website by MM&M -created by Intouch Solutions)

DiabetesMine: An amazing ‘gold mine of straight talk and resources for people living with diabetes.’ If you could only read one diabetes blog, this would be it. (or follow Amy Tenderich on twitter @diabetesmine)

SixUntilMe: Kerri Morrone Sparling’s blog-Diabetes doesn’t define me, but it help’s explain me. Kerri spoke at last week’s e-Patients conference; you can read her ePatient 2009: Voice of the Patient presentation here (Oct 24 blog). She made some great points: Until there is a cure, I’ll keep blogging. It helps me to heal. Or: “I’m a lifelong diabetic.  Pharma’s job is to keep me alive.  I use their drugs and their devices to stay healthy.  THAT is their priority.  I don’t care how many page views they have.  If they want to have a Facebook page or something after they’ve accomplished that goal?  Fine by me.” (Follow Kerri on twitter @sixuntilme)

Juvenation: A Type 1 Diabetes Community created by JDRF and in collaboration with Novo Nordisk’schanging diabetes leadership initiative. The site actively builds a community with forums and blogs and keeps on getting better. (Created by Ignite Health)

Novo Nordisk’s Partnership with race car driver Charlie Kimball: More than their twitter fame of the ‘first branded tweet’ via @racewithinsulin, Charlie is a genuine, hard working race car driver and Novo Nordisk, a company who seems earnest in their desire to help show people that even with type I diabetes, life can not only go on, but can be what you want to make of it.

Lemonade Life by Alison Blass type I Diabetes blogger who spoke at last month’s Digital Pharma conference: ”A patient is an unwilling customer”.  They are ‘buying’ your medication to help their condition, but they’re not happy about the disease/condition that they have, often for life…This was part of 5 suggestions for Pharma: 1) listen 2) be honest 3) think big- beyond marketing a product 4) a patient is an unwilling customer 5) be there for me.

Through The Diabetes Ten City Challenge, sponsored by the APhA Foundation with support fromGlaxoSmithKline, employers provide employees, dependents and retirees with diabetes a voluntary health benefit, waive co-pays for diabetes medications and supplies and help people manage their diabetes on a day to day basis with the help of a specially-trained pharmacist “coach”. Today, 30 employers and hundreds of local pharmacists in ten cities are working together to help people manage their diabetes. In addition, as a result of the success of the Diabetes Ten City Challenge, in 2008 the Foundation announced HealthMapRx, an initiative that makes the DTCC collaborative model of care available to employers nationwide for diabetes and other chronic diseases.

Roche: For bringing together a group of e-patients and bloggers to listen and learn about diabetes at theRoche Diabetes Social Media Seminar this summer ….Also read about DiabetesMine’s visit to the Roche New Concept Incubator. Looks like Roche is reaching out to the diabetes community to learn and collaborate…to adopt patient-centered marketing principles…

Get EyeSmart. EyeCommitted. To promote awareness of the need for an annual eye exam, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, along with its partners the American Society of Retina Specialists, theMacula Society and the Retina Society, have launched EyeSmart: EyeCommitted, a social media campaign to encourage people with diabetes to pledge to get an annual eye exam and prevent vision loss in people with diabetes.– 90 percent of severe vision loss from diabetes can be prevented!

What Can You and I Do?

Take a few minutes- or more- during Diabetes month and see if you can’t learn something new or share a new piece of helpful information with others….If you have children, talk to them about the benefits of eating healthy and staying fit…A pretty scary stat: 1 out of every 3 children born today will face a future with diabetes if current trends continue.

If you’re in healthcare marketing, let’s give some thought as to how we can take these programs even further, or how we might apply some of these learnings to help ’socialize’ other medical conditions…

Comments or thoughts?

I know I addressed this letter “Dear Consumer” but really I know you better than you think. You’re a mom, a sister, a friend. A father, a husband, a son. You might be someone that was just diagnosed, and you’re seeking answers. You have a name. You might be long-suffering from a chronic, debilitating disease, and you’re seeking relief. Based on discussions with your doctor, you’re hoping I can help you. What you may not know is, I’m really hoping I can help you, too.

My name is Pharma. And I’m not as bad as you think.

You might have been looking for information online recently. Let me guess … Google, Yahoo, Bing? PatientsLikeMe.com? Online communities specific to your condition? You might even be Facebook and Twitter. You’re reading and connecting and looking for help, hope, and support wherever you can get it.

And I (Pharma) am noticeably absent.

I am sorry I can’t talk to you. I really, really want to. But my hands are somewhat tied right now, my voice muffled. And I know you probably don’t understand why. So here’s my attempt at an explanation that I am hoping will help:

• You probably already know that the FDA heavily regulates how pharmaceutical companies communicate with consumers if it can in any way be considered promotional or advertising in nature.
• They do this for a reason – to help ensure your safety.
• They want you to understand that there are risks associated with every drug. They want to make sure those risks are as up-front and obvious as all of the positive things we have to say about our drugs (hence all those side effects being mentioned in the TV ads you see).
• FDA also wants to make sure that we (Pharma) talk about our drugs only in the context in which FDA approved them, or “on-label.” For example, if a drug was approved by FDA to treat asthma but it is sometimes prescribed by a physician for COPD or another related illness, we just can’t talk about that with you. That would be considered “off-label” promotion. Your doctor is the best person to discuss that with.
• Also, FDA requires Pharma to report to FDA any drug side effects or “adverse events” from consumers. This is so that if there are any problems that arise with the drug, they want to be able to identify those problems early and address them quickly.
• While the FDA has provided fairly clear guidelines on how pharmaceutical companies should address these three things — balance of risks/benefits, on/off-label promotion, and side effect reporting — when it comes to traditional advertising, the FDA has never told Pharma how they should use the Internet and social media to advertise. The only thing FDA has done is tell Pharma when it did something wrong.

So, it’s not that the FDA says I cannot use the Internet or social media to communicate with you. They’ve just never been very clear on exactly HOW I can use these mediums without crossing the imaginary line. And by not providing clear guidance, it makes our lawyers and the other people responsible in our organizations very nervous. They don’t know what the rules are, so they can’t judge whether the communicators are following them or not.

I know I’ve made mistakes in the past. I know you don’t trust me. And I know staying silent certainly doesn’t help.

In fact, I don’t blame you for mistrusting me. I’m not communicative. I’m not transparent. I interrupt your 10:00 news with silly animated TV commercials featuring details of disgusting side effects. You search for information online but there’s only so much I can say. You might even end up on my Web site and look for a place to ask a question, to submit a complaint, but there is none.

I hope things will change. I’m trying. With the upcoming FDA hearings, I am hoping not just to get direction on how to “advertise” to you on the Internet and within social media. I want to talk to you. Have a conversation. Get to know you. See what you need; see how I can help. To provide support … when and where you need it. (And I’m interested to know … do you even want to have a conversation with me?)

At the end of the day, I’m Pharma, but I’m a person too. I’m a mom, a sister, a friend. A father, a husband, a son.

Someday, perhaps, we’ll meet.

Sincerely,

Pharma

All the members of my posse were there including Fabio Gratton (@skypen), Brad Pendergraph (@bradatpharma, who I predict may not long be “at pharma”), Kevin Nalty (aka “Nalts”; @nalts, no longer at pharma), Shwen Gwee (@shwen, currently at pharma), Steve Woodruff (@swoodruff, who took the photo on left; that’s me in the yellow Hawaiian shirt that Steve did not like), Ellen Hoenig Carlson (@ellenhoenig), Christiane Truelove (@Christinaetrue), Phil Baumann (@philbaumann), Jonathan Richman (@jonmrich), and other members of the pharma social media posse. Search for the #digpharm Twitter hashtag (see here) to find them all.

What you won’t find, however, are any pharma legal/regulatory folk. At yesterday’s “un” conference afternoon session there was a lot of complaints about legal/regulatory restrictions on the use of social media by pharma marketers. You know, “legal/regulatory won’t allow us to do this” and “legal/regulatory won’t allow us to do that” and “our legal/regulatory people don’t understand social media,” etc., etc.

When I asked “Are they any legal/regulatory people here?”, no one raised their hands. Maybe they were there but afraid to expose themselves to such a hostile group or — much more likely — they just were not there.

The disconnect between legal/regulatory within pharma and social media advocates inside and outside pharma has gotten so bad, I liken the situation to street gangs (eg, Crips vs. Bloods)

Unless these two pharma gangs can discuss and resolve their differences (ie, by sending representatives to a social media “peace” conference), we’re not making any progress. And I don’t think any guidance from the FDA will make a bit of difference (more about that in my next post).

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – Pharma Social Media Crips vs. Legal/Regulatory Bloods: Call for a "Peace" Conference

ATryn is the brand name of the anticoagulant antithrombin manufactured by the Massachusetts-based U.S. company GTC Biotherapeutics. It is made from the milk of goats that have been genetically modified to produce human antithrombin, a plasma protein with anticoagulant properties. Microinjection was used to insert human antithrombin genes into the cell nucleus of their embryos. ATryn is the first medicine produced using genetically engineered animals. GTC states that one genetically modified goat can produce the same amount of antithrombin in a year as 90,000 blood donations. GTC chose goats for the process because they reproduce more rapidly than cattle and produce more protein than rabbits or mice.

More on Wikipedia

Brand name: Atryn
Generic name/category: anticoagulant antithrombin, Anticoagulants, Genetic engineering
Company: Lundbeck
Country/Market: USA, North America
Indication(s)/use: prevention of peri-operative and peri-partum thromboembolic events
Target: Healthcare Professionals (HCP)
Tagline: Make a recombinant connection
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: single-page
Publication/Aired: Blood – August 06, 2009
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Sep 17, 2009

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For patients with life-threatening fungal infections
There's no time for a second chance

Voriconazole (VFEND, Pfizer) is a triazole antifungal medication that is generally used to treat serious, invasive fungal infections. These are generally seen in patients who are immunocompromised, and include invasive candidiasis, invasive aspergillosis, and certain emerging fungal infections.

More on Wikipedia

Brand name: Vfend
Generic name/category: Voriconazole, Antifungals, Triazoles
Company: Pfizer
Country/Market: USA, North America
Indication(s)/use: invasive fungal infections, candidiasis, aspergillosis, and certain emerging fungal infections.
Target: Healthcare Professionals (HCP)
Tagline: When it matters most
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: single-page
Publication/Aired: Blood – August 20, 2009

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In Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) WHO Class III or IV
Tracleer stands alone

Bosentan (BOZENTAN) is a dual endothelin receptor antagonist important in the treatment of pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH). It is licensed in the United States, the European Union and other countries by Actelion Pharmaceuticals for the management of PAH under the trade name Tracleer.

More on Wikipedia

Brand name: Tracleer
Generic name/category: Bosentan, Endothelin receptor antagonists
Company: Actelion
Country/Market: USA, North America
Indication(s)/use: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)
Target: Healthcare Professionals (HCP)
Tagline: A cornerstone of oral therapy
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: single-page
Publication/Aired: Chest – September 2009

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Later that month, I drafted a petition calling upon the FDA to convene a public hearing on the issue. The petition stated:

“…it is necessary for the FDA to convene a PUBLIC HEARING where ALL stakeholders can participate in a discussion of the issues and provide the FDA with a good understanding of the Internet as it exists today and tomorrow. That understanding and knowledge can then be the basis for issuing guidance that will allow the pharmaceutical industry to contribute to the conversation online” (see “FDA, Tear Down This Wall! A Draft Petition Calling for a Public Hearing“).

Well, the FDA has now actually submitted a notice to the Federal Register (to be published Monday, September 21, 2009) calling for a public hearing on the Promotion of Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools:

Docket No. FDA-2009-N-0441, CDER 200994. Promotion of Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools; Notice of Public Hearing (Notice of public hearing; request for comments). OFR PRE-PUB: PDF of notice Public Hearing on November 12, 2009 And November 13, 2009 Comments due February 28, 2010

The pharmaceutical industry and readers of this blog have long supported such a hearing. See this Pharma Marketing News article:
“Developing Guidelines for Pharma’s Use of the Internet & Social Media” (FREE!) to see the results of the survey “Should FDA Convene a Public Hearing on Use of Social Media by Pharma?“

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – FDA Announces Public Hearing on Promotion of Drugs on Internet & via Social Media. This is NOT a Hoax!

In PNH, their most vital organ is exploding.

What will you do?

Reduce chronic hemolysis ??? the underlying cause of progressive morbidities and mortality in PNH.

Visit us at PNHsource.com to learn more.

Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), sometimes referred to as Marchiafava-Micheli syndrome, is a rare, acquired, potentially life-threatening disease of the blood characterised by complement-induced hemolytic anemia (anemia due to destruction of red blood cells in the bloodstream), red urine (due to the appearance of hemoglobin in the urine) and thrombosis. PNH is the only hemolytic anemia caused by an acquired (rather than inherited) intrinsic defect in the cell membrane (deficiency of glycophosphatidylinositol leading to absence of protective proteins on the membrane). It may develop on its own (”primary PNH”) or in the context of other bone marrow disorders such as aplastic anemia (”secondary PNH”).

More on Wikipedia

Brand name: PNH Source
Generic name/category: Disease awareness, web portal
Company: Alexion Pharmaceuticals
Country/Market: USA, North America
Indication(s)/use: Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH)
Target: Healthcare Professionals (HCP)
Tagline: Innovators in complement inhibition
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: double-page spread
Publication/Aired: Blood – September 17, 2009

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You don't have to live with a car.

Mederma is an onion-extract-based topical gel produced by Merz Pharmaceuticals of Greensboro, North Carolina. Mederma's marketing claims it can make scars “softer, smoother, and less noticeable”. A 2006 published peer reviewed research article indicated no statistically significant change in hypertrophic scar appearance from products of this type. However, a 1996 study into the therapeutic values of onion and garlic found that they may act as an anti-inflammatory and bacteriostatic and in 2002, researchers found that Mederma improved collagen organization after injury in rabbits.

More on Wikipedia

Brand name: Mederma
Generic name/category: onion-extract-based topical gel
Company: Merz
Country/Market: USA, North America
Indication(s)/use: soften, smooth and reduce appearance of scars
Target: Consumers (DTC)
Tagline: Leave your scar behind
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: single-page
Publication/Aired: More – September 2009

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Sep 07, 2009

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In April, the FDA sent warning letters to several pharmaceutical companies citing paid search engine ads that it claimed to violate FDA regulations (see “FDA’s Actions Speak Louder than Its Words: On the Internet It’s the Medium as Well as the Message!“).

But what about organic — ie, unpaid, “non-sponsored,” natural — search engine listings such as the following for Viagra (click on image for an enlarged view)? Are they next on the FDA’s chopping block?

That was a question posed by Julie Batten, e-marketing manager at Klick Communications (see “Search Marketing in the Pharma Industry“).

“To date, organic listings haven’t been considered promotional, and rightly so,” said Batten.

Batten notes that pharma companies can determine the wording of organic listings by carefully crafting “meta” data (ie, TITLE and DESCRIPTION) within the header of HTML files that generate Web pages. Since “meta data isn’t meant to be consumer-facing; it’s meant to be Search Engine spider-facing,” Batten argues that organic listing based on meta data “aren’t within the jurisdiction of the regulating bodies to review and approve.”

However, upon review of a few meta tags for Rx drug sites, I find that the wording seems to be crafted especially for consumers and not just for search engines. The following are some examples:

Viagra

• Meta tag TITLE: “Erectile Dysfunction (ED) Treatment – VIAGRA ® (sildenafil citrate)”
• Meta tag DESCR: “Learn about prescription VIAGRA ® (sildenafil citrate), an erectile dysfunction (ED) treatment option that may help your ED.”

Sponsored ad (top) vs. organic listing (bottom):

Concerta (http://www.concerta.net)

• Meta tag TITLE: “CONCERTA® – ADHD Medication to Treat ADHD Symptoms in Children and Adults”
• Meta tag DESCR: “Learn about ADHD in Children and Adults, treatment options, and how CONCERTA� can help manage ADHD symptoms.”

Sponsored ad (top) vs. organic listing (bottom):

Latisse

• Meta tag TITLE: “LATISSE® Home | LATISSE® — the first and only FDA-approved eyelash growth treatment”
• Meta tag DESCR: “Grow your own natural lashes, LONGER, FULLER, DARKER. From the creators of BOTOX® Cosmetic.”

Sponsored ad (top) vs. organic listing (bottom)

In each case, the organic listing exactly matches the meta tags, which are clearly written with the searching consumer in mind. That is, each DESCR meta tag is actually a small direct-to-consumer (DTC) ad! However, none of these descriptions contains the fair balance (ie, side effect) information that FDA requires real-world DTC ads to include.

So, my question is: Will the FDA look upon organic search engine listings as direct-to-consumer ads because the meta tags are clearly written as ads, not merely descriptions of the landing page?

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – Are Organic Search Results Next on FDA’s Chopping Block?

we're the only pharmacy with a target attached

Brand name: Target pharmacy
Generic name/category: Retail pharmacy
Company: Target
Country/Market: USA, North America
Indication(s)/use: Retail Pharmacy, awareness
Target: Consumers (DTC)
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: double-page spread
Publication/Aired: Parenting School Years – October 2009

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Une att?©nuation des sympt??mes positifs et n?©gatifs a ?©t?© d?©montr?©e avec Abilify.

Nouveau Abilify.

Here's Abilify, indicated for the treatment of schizophrenia.
Because negative symptoms are also part of the road.

New Abilify.

Aripiprazole (marketed as Abilify, Abilify Discmelt; also known as BMS 337039, OPC-14597, and APZ) was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November 15, 2002 for the treatment of schizophrenia, the sixth atypical antipsychotic medication of its kind. More recently, it received FDA approval for the treatment of acute manic and mixed episodes associated with bipolar disorder, and as an adjunct for the treatment of major depressive disorder. Aripiprazole was developed by Otsuka in Japan; in the U.S., Otsuka America markets the drug jointly with Bristol-Myers Squibb.

More on Wikipedia

Brand name: Abilify
Generic name/category: Aripiprazole, Atypical antipsychotics, Piperazines
Company: Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS)
Country/Market: Canada, North America
Indication(s)/use: Schizophrenia
Target: Healthcare Professionals (HCP)
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: double-page spread
Publication/Aired: Le M?©decin du Qu?©bec – September 2009

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Against bad breath.

Agency: RGA Comunica?§?£o, Recife, Brazil
Creative Director: Daniel Zago
Art Directors: Olivia Nowak,Gabriel Linhares
Copywriters: Daniel Zago, Ricardo Zaclis
Typographer: Olivia Nowak
Photographer: Sven Schrader

Brand name: Even Mouthwash
Generic name/category: Mouthwash, oral hygiene
Country/Market: Brazil, South America
Indication(s)/use: bad breath
Target: Consumers (DTC)
Tagline: Against bad breath
Medium: TV commercial
Size/duration: 15 seconds
Publication/Aired: 2009
Source: Ads of the World

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Aug 20, 2009

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In Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Mexico, nabilone is marketed as Cesamet. It was approved in 1985 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting that has not responded to conventional antiemetics. Though it was approved by the FDA in 1985, the drug only began marketing in the United States in 2006. It is also approved for use in treatment of anorexia and weight loss in patients with AIDS.

Although it doesn't have the official indication (except in Mexico), nabilone is widely used as an adjunct therapy for chronic pain management. Numerous trials and case studies have demonstrated various benefits for condition such as fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis.

More on Wikipedia

Brand name: Cesamet
Generic name/category: Nabilone, antiemetic
Company: Valeant
Country/Market: Canada, North America
Indication(s)/use: chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting
Target: Healthcare Professionals (HCP)
Medium: Web banner
Size/duration: 728X90
Publication/Aired: NEJM – September 2009

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Sep 03, 2009

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tabaconomia.com.br

Agency: master comunica?§?£o
Executive Creative Director: Flavio Waiteman
Art Director: David Keller
Copywriter: Victor Afonso
Photographer: Alexandre Salgado

Brand name: tabaconomia.com.br
Generic name/category: public service
Company: url=Company/url
Country/Market: Brazil, South America
Indication(s)/use: stop smoking, smoking cessation
Target: Consumers (DTC)
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: double-page spread, poster
Publication/Aired: 2009

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Aug 26, 2009

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Agency: CHI & Partners, London, UK
Creative Director: Ewan Paterson
Creative team: Alan Cinnamond and Sandy Cinnamond
Photographer: Tim McPherson
Typographer and Designer: Craig Ward

Brand name: Talk about autism
Generic name/category: public service, disease awareness
Brand name: Treehouse
Country/Market: UK, Europe
Indication(s)/use: autism
Target: Consumers (DTC)
Tagline: The longer a child with autism goes without help, the harder they are to reach.
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: double-page spread, poster
Publication/Aired: August 2009

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Sep 04, 2009

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Agency: CHI & Partners, London, UK
Creative Director: Ewan Paterson
Creative team: Alan Cinnamond and Sandy Cinnamond
Photographer: Tim McPherson
Typographer and Designer: Craig Ward

Brand name: Talk about autism
Generic name/category: public service, disease awareness
Brand name: Treehouse
Country/Market: UK, Europe
Indication(s)/use: autism
Target: Consumers (DTC)
Tagline: The longer a child with autism goes without help, the harder they are to reach.
Medium: Print ad
Size/duration: double-page spread, poster
Publication/Aired: August 2009

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Sep 04, 2009

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The Tweets included statements like:

• “RELY dabigatran had no liver toxicity” Pradaxa® (dabigatran etexilate) is BI’s brand anti-coagulant drug that competes with generic warfarin
• “RE-LY results: Significance on primary endpoints and significantly lower bleeding”

PharmaGossip also reported that the word “Impressive” was used in a BI Tweet to describe the results and asked “Boehringer’s twittering at the ESC – is it being approved by their internal regulators?” This morning, I cannot find the @Boehringer Tweet PharmaGossip refers to — maybe BI deleted it — but the word “impressive” is used in the official press release. Therefore, I assume whatever is being posted on Twitter HAS been approved by BI’s regulatory/legal people.

BI also used Twitpic to show us that “Demand is high to get into the RELY press briefing” (see photo).

Not only has BI used the free services of Twitter and Twitpic to promote the results of this clinical trial, it also uploaded new videos on its new new Boehringer Stroke Prevention YouTube channel.

On August 27, 2009 it uploaded the video entitled “Day in the life of a Warfarin patient,” which has actors portraying patients who complain about the problems they have with warfarin treatment.

As promised, the YouTube channel is also “packed with RE-LY trial information.”

That’s a lot of promotion for very little money!

BI seems to be ahead of the pharma pack in using social media to woo journalists and physicians rather than the general public via Twitter and other social media. I discussed this strategy with Judith von Gordon, BI’s Head of External Communications, and John Pugh, BI’s Director of Corporate Communication/External Communications, in a June, 2009 Pharma Marketing Talk podcast (see “Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma on Twitter: Boehringer Ingelheim“).

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – Full BOEHR(inger) Social Media Reporting of RELY Trial Results

However, it is common practice for individual pharmaceutical companies to limit the first amendment rights of agencies that create DTC and other ads for them. They do this by requiring agencies to sign non-disclosure and work-for-hire agreements before they are hired as an agency of record. Practically all corporations do this, not just drug companies. Corporations are not democracies except when it suits them.

Click on image to enlarge and read.

Recently, the issue of limiting the rights of pharma agencies came to my attention via a new (to me) blog I discovered via Twitter: “Pixels & Pills.” This blog is a collaborative effort between Palio and Zemoga, two creative and complementary marketing firms that have been working together for over eight years.

Last week, the blog published a post by Guy Mastrion, Palio’s Chief Global Creative Officer, entitled “The FDA, Freedom of Speech and the Web.” In that post, Mastrion complained that one of his pharma clients asked the agency to remove a creative piece his agency did for them. The drug company client cited FDA regulations as the reason:

“Recently a client asked us to remove work that we created for them from our corporate and personal websites. The reason for the request, as understood by us, was out of concern that the work could be viewed out of context and not in compliance with FDA guidelines. The client felt at risk for being cited for non-compliance and possibly even fined.”

Mastrion also used a hypothetical patient-created content situation to imply that the FDA stifled free speech not just for pharma companies, but for ordinary citizens as well.

“So, let’s say a person living with diabetes sees an ad for a diabetes product, and is compelled to copy the ad from whatever website they happen to be on. Then she notices a bit of copy from another source, it could be poetry, that perfectly supports her idea or feelings, so she copies that and then posts it to a site of her own or a social media site. This information, now taken out of context, is an expression of her freedom of speech but it also flies in the face of FDA guidelines.”

Of course, the FDA has absolutely no jurisdiction over what you or I say on the Internet. So this hypothetical patient case is just a red herring that Mastrion uses to raise our ire about his own predicament with his pharma client, which is a completely different situation. As an agent of the pharma company in question, Palio is subject to FDA regulations whenever it makes claims about a drug product it has helped its client promote.

“As an agency,” says Mastrion, “our ability to attract new clients requires us to be able to promote ourselves, and prospective clients expect to see case studies of work done for others. Our website and other areas of web presence provide unique opportunities to showcase our work. To display one page of concept and often two or three pages of fair balance in the context of self-promotion to the trade seems unreasonable.”

Now, I do not know what Palio did to trigger the necessity for fair balance, but I’ve seen many other agencies display the work they have done for their pharma clients without any problem.

A hint why Palio’s case might have been different came to me when I watched one of the case studies currently on Palio’s site. It was for Zometa, a drug approved by FDA to “reduce and delay bone complications due to multiple myeloma and bone metastases from solid tumors.” The case study on Palio’s Web site did not just present the ads it created for Zometa. It was a video history with voiceover, which at one point proclaimed Zometa as a “life-preserving product.” Life-preserving, as far as I can tell, is not an approved indication for this drug. If I were Novartis (the drug company that markets Zometa), I may be worried about that claim made by its agent without providing fair balance.

Maybe Palio went even further in the case study that another drug company asked it to remove from its web site. It’s possible, therefore, that the drug company rightly used FDA regulations as an excuse for removal of the case.

But, generally, it is NOT the FDA that limits the free speech of agencies — it’s the drug company clients of agencies that do that. If an agency signs a “work-for-hire” agreement with a drug company, the work product is fully owned by the drug company and the agency must have the permission of the drug company to show it as an example of its work.

Most often, drug companies do not want certain things said about its products if it has the ability to censor. Of course, no drug company can censor what I say about a product because they are not the boss of me! They are also not the boss of diabetes patients unless those patients violate laws such as copyright and trademark laws. Although I can say anything about a drug, I may not be completely free to use the drug logo. For example, I cannot create a phony Cialis blog and use the Cialis logo to make it appear to ba an official Cialis site (see “Cialis Blog Shut Down“). But the FDA is certainly not involved in these kinds of disputes.

In the case of Palio’s Zometa case study, I think the client (I assume it was Novartis) has been especially forgiving. The case study mentions “sagging brand” and “fragmented branding approach” in the introduction. Of course, in the end, all problems were solved and Zometa won market share. Everyone is happy and it’s a good story.

What’s my point? Simply that in this and many other cases, the FDA is unjustly accused of limiting “freedom of speech” when, in fact, drug company anti-competitive policies are the primary culprits when it comes to first amendment rights of agencies and ordinary citizens.

P.S. In all my criticisms of brand products, I have never once been approached by a drug company demanding that I remove or amend my piece. I also try not to make benefit claims of drugs that are not supported by the approved labeling.

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – Pharma, Freedom of Speech, and Ad Agencies

Advocates of this policy have a number of rejoinders to this, notably that NIH funding is responsible for a lot of innovation. This is true, but theoretical innovation is not the same thing as product innovation. We tend to think of innovation as a matter of a mad scientist somewhere making a Brilliant Discovery!!! but in fact, innovation is more often a matter of small steps towards perfection. Wal-Mart’s revolution in supply chain management has been one of the most powerful factors influencing American productivity in recent decades. Yes, it was enabled by the computer revolutionbut computers, by themselves, did not give Wal-Mart the idea of treating trucks like mobile warehouses, much less the expertise to do it.

In the case of pharma, what an NIH or academic researcher does is very, very different from what a pharma researcher does. They are no more interchangeable than theoretical physicists and civil engineers. An academic identifies targets. A pharma researcher finds out whether those targets can be activated with a molecule. Then he finds out whether that molecule can be made to reach the target. Is it small enough to be orally dosed? (Unless the disease you’re after is fairly fatal, inability to orally dose is pretty much a drug-killer). Can it be made reliably? Can it be made cost-effectively? Can you scale production? It’s not a viable drug if it takes one guy three weeks with a bunsen burner to knock out 3 doses.

I don’t think a lot of readers here will have a problem with that description, because it seems pretty accurate. True, we do a lot more inhibiting drug targets than we do activating them, because it’s easier to toss a spanner in the works, but that’s mostly just a matter of definitions. And this does pass by the people doing some drug discovery work in academia (and the people doing more blue-sky stuff in industry), but overall, it’s basically how things are, plus or minus a good ol’ Bunsen burner or two.

But not everyone’s buying it. Take this response by Ben Domenech over at The New Ledger. We’d better hope that this isn’t a representative view, and that the people who are trying to overhaul all of health care as quickly as possible have a better handle on how our end of the system works:

. . .But needless to say, this passage and the ones following it surprised me a great deal. Working at the Department of Health and Human Services provided me the opportunity to learn a good deal about the workings of the NIH, and I happen to have multiple friends who still work there ” and their shocked reaction to McArdle’s description was stronger than mine, to say the least.

œMcArdle clearly doesn’t understand what she’s writing about, one former NIH colleague said today. œWhere does she think Nobel prize winners in biomedical research originate, academic researchers or in Pharma? Our academic researchers run clinical trials and develop drugs. I’m not trying to talk down Pharma, which I’m a big fan of, but I don’t think anyone in the field could read what she wrote without laughing.

Well, I certainly could make it through without a chuckle, and I’ll have been doing drug discovery for twenty years this fall. So how does the guy from HHS think things go over here?

To understand how research is divided overall, consider it as three tranches: basic, translational, and clinical. Basic is research at the molecular level to understand how things work; translational research takes basic findings and tries to find applications for those findings in a clinical setting; and clinical research takes the translational findings and produces procedures, drugs, and equipment for use by and on patients. . .

. . .The truth, as anyone knowledgeable within the system will tell you, is that private companies just don’t do basic research. They do productization research, and only for well-known medical conditions that have a lot of commercial value to solve. The government funds nearly everything else, whether it’s done by government scientists or by academic scientists whose work is funded overwhelmingly by government grants.

Hmm. Well-known with a lot of commercial value. Now it’s true that we tend to go after things with commercial value – it is a business, after all – but how well-known is Gaucher disease? Or Fabry disease? Mucopolysaccharidosis I? People who actually know something about the drug industry will be nodding their heads, though, because they’ll have caught on that I’m listing off Genzyme’s product portfolio (part of it, anyway), which is largely made up of treatments for such things. There ar many other examples. Believe me, if we can make money going after a disease, we’ll give it a try, and there are a lot of diseases. (The biggest breakdown occurs not when a disease affects a smaller number of people, but when almost no one who has it can possibly pay for the cost of developing the treatment, as in many tropical diseases).

But even taking Domenech’s three research divisions as given – and they’re not bad – don’t we in industry even get to do a little bit of translational research? Even sometimes some basic stuff? After all, in the great majority times when we start attacking some new target, there is no drug for it, you know. We have to express the protein in an active form, work up a reliable assay using it, screen our compound collections looking for a lead structure, then work on it for a few years to make new compounds that are potent, selective, nontoxic, practical to produce, and capable of being dosed in humans. (Oh, and they really should be chemical structures that no one’s ever made or even speculated about before). All of that is “productization” research? Even when we’re the first people to actually take a given target idea into the clinic at all?

That happens all the time, you know. The first project I ever worked on in this industry was a selective dopamine antagonist targeted for schizophrenia. We were the first company to take this particular subtype into the clinic, and boy, did we bomb big. No activity at all. It was almost as if we’d discovered something basic about schizophrenia, but apparently that can’t be the case. Then I worked on Alzheimer’s therapies, namely protease inhibitors targeting beta-amyloid production, and if I’m not mistaken, the only real human data on such things has come from industry. I could go on, and I will, given half a chance. But I hope that the point has been made. If it hasn’t, then consider this quote, from here:

œ. . .translational research requires skills and a culture that universities typically lack, says Victoria Hale, chief executive of the non-profit drug company the Institute for OneWorld Health in San Francisco, California, which is developing drugs for visceral leishmaniasis, malaria and Chagas’ disease. Academic institutions are often naive about what it takes to develop a drug, she says, and much basic research is therefore unusable. That’s because few universities are willing to support the medicinal chemistry research needed to verify from the outset that a compound will not be a dead end in terms of drug development.”

The persistent confusion over what’s done in industry and what’s done in academia has been one of my biggest lessons from running this blog. The topic just will not die. A few years ago, I ended up writing a long post on what exactly drug companies do in response to the “NIH discovers all the drugs” crowd, with several follow-ups (here, here, and here). But overall, Hercules had an easier time with the Hydra.

Now, there is drug discovery in academia (ask Dennis Liotta!), although not enough of it to run an industry. Lyrica is an example of a compound that came right out of the university labs, although it certainly had an interesting road to the market. And the topic of academic drug research has come up around here many times over the last few years. So I don’t want to act as if there’s no contribution at all past basic research in academia, because that’s not true at all. But neither is it the case that pharma just swoops in, picks up the wonder drugs, and decides what color the package should be.

But what really burns my toast is this part:

So Pharma is interested in making money as their primary goal ” that should surprise no one. But they’re also interested in avoiding litigation. Suppose for a moment that Pharma produces a drug to treat one non-life threatening condition, and it’s a monetary success, earning profits measured in billions of dollars. But then one of their researchers discovers it might have other applications, including life-saving ones. Instead of starting on research, Pharma will stand pat. Why? Because it doesn’t make any business sense to go through an entire FDA approval process and a round of clinical trials all over again, and at the end of the day, they could just be needlessly jeopardizing the success of a multi-billion dollar drug. It makes business sense to just stand with what works perfectly fine for the larger population, not try to cure a more focused and more deadly condition.

Ummm. . .isn’t this exactly what happened with Vioxx? Merck was trying to see if Cox-2 inhibitors could be useful for colon cancer, which is certainly deadly, and certainly a lot less common than joint and muscle pains. Why didn’t Merck “stand pat”? Because they wanted to make even more money of course. They’d already spent some of the cash that would have to have been spent on developing Vioxx, and cancer trials aren’t as long and costly as they are in some other therapeutic areas. So it was actually a reasonable thing to look into. If you’re staying in the same dosing range, you’re not likely to turn up tox problems that you didn’t already see in your earlier trials. (That’s where Merck got into real trouble, actually – the accusation was that they’d seen signs of Vioxx’s cardiovascular problems before the colon cancer trial, but breezed past them). But you just might come up with a benefit that allows you to sell your drug to a whole new market.

And that might also explain why, in general, drug companies look for new therapeutic opportunities like this all the time with their existing drugs. In fact, sometimes we look for them so aggressively that we get nailed for off-label promotion. No, instead of standing pat, we get in trouble for just the opposite. Your patented drug is a wasting asset, remember, and your job is to make the absolute most of it while it’s still yours. Closing your eyes to new opportunities is not the way to do that.

The thing is, Domenech’s heart seems to be mostly in the right place. He just doesn’t understand the drug industry, and neither do his NIH sources. Talking to someone who works in it would have helped a bit.

Generic name/category: Advertising agency
Company: Cherry
Country/Market: UK, Europe
Indication(s)/use: corporate communication
Target: Trade
Publication: Pharma Marketing July 2009
8 views
Jul 15, 2009

Generic name/category: Advertising agency
Company: Lane Earl Cox
Country/Market: UK, Europe
Indication(s)/use: corporate communication
Target: Trade
Tagline: Inspiring emotion
Publication: Pharma Marketing July 2009
5 views
Jul 15, 2009

What IMS does for its clients is a revelation

Brand name: IMS
Generic name/category: Data gathering services
Company: IMS
Country/Market: Europe
Indication(s)/use: Corporate awareness
Target: Trade
Tagline: Intelligence. Applied
Publication: Pharma Marketing Europe July August 2009

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Jul 15, 2009

‘I have a low-income friend, 69 yrs of age. She is almost a cripple without celebrex but Humana refused to pay for it altho the Dr. orders. Is there a program that could help her get the celebrex.’

Well, there is a program, which you can find on Pfizer.com here. The image on the left is in the header of Pfizer’s “helpful answers” Web site. I am a little confused by this image, which outlines people’s heads with medicine bottles, Rx pill containers, and cups. Why was that necessary?

Pfizer’s “helpful answers” site offers a pretty comprehensive list of assistance programs offered by Pfizer, the pharma industry in general, and by the government.

Why didn’t this person go to Pfizer.com (or celebrex.com) where this information can easily be found? I don’t know. But maybe she trusts me more than Pfizer or Celebrex marketers.

All the talk about how to use social media to drive consumers to branded Rx sites without pissing off the FDA (aka violating FDA regulations) is really about how to use social media to advance pharma’s self-centered approach to marketing, the goal of which is to answer the question “How can I get the consumer to do what I want?”

Using social media to answer THAT question is a fruitless enterprise. The Levemir Tweet heard round the pharma marketing world (see here) is an example. Who among the 300 or so people who read that Tweet gives a crap? Nada! They didn’t ask for it and they got nothing out of it.

But social media will eventually force pharma to shift from “marketer-centric” push messages to “consumer-centric” pull messages. That is, marketers will be pulled into responding directly to consumer inquiries such as the one above. When the response is published within a social media application such as a discussion forum, it benefits everyone else reading that message who is faced with a similar problem.

Maybe Celebrex is not indicated for treating crippling conditions and the FDA would not want to see that mentioned on a Pfizer site. Do you think for one moment that the FDA would slap Pfizer with a warning letter because it allowed the question above to be posted to a site that Pfizer maintains or sponsors? Even if the letter came, the answer from Pfizer would have been received and people would have been helped.

No, the FDA is not the problem.

The above message also says something not too nice about one of Pfizer’s main customers: a big insurance company that probably has lots of other Pfizer drugs on its formulary. Pfizer wouldn’t want to piss off Humana, so it would be in a conundrum about how to handle such a message.

Can it redact part of the message as in: ‘I have a low-income friend, 69 yrs of age. She is almost a cripple without celebrex but her insurance company refused to pay for it altho the Dr. orders. Is there a program that could help her get the celebrex.’?

I dunno. Consumers may not like it that Pfizer edits user-generated content. Pfizer would have to have a clear publicly-stated policy about that and even then it may not be acceptable.

My reason for posting this is to point out that:

1. patients need support and social media may be one way to provide that support so that the answers/knowledge can be shared by the whole community, and
2. there’s more than FDA regulations to worry about when implementing such an application.

Unfortunately, I do not have all the answers. Maybe someone reading this can help.

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – Can Pharma Use Social Media to Provide Patient Support?

We see them everyday on pretty much every site we visit…except for pharma. We often use them to make decisions about what products we buy and which we keep buying…except for pharma. We give our opinion to manufacturers, as the people who know what the product really does, to help them improve…except for pharma.

I’m talking about the product review. If you have bought anything online or researched a future purchase online, chances are that you referenced user-created product reviews. It’s becoming fairly standard practice for most companies, as they’ve come to realize that this is pretty much an expected feature among today’s consumer. But it wasn’t always this way. (note: I mentioned product reviews in my article “The Myth of Adverse Event Reporting.”)

One of the big reasons that product reviews were slow to appear for a long time is that companies were afraid of negative reviews. It turns out, of course, that simply having reviews can increase traffic, conversion rate, and average order value (see more detail here). In addition, negative reviews aren™t an issue so long as there aren™t only negative reviews.  Consider this situation. You™re checking out a product online and all the reviews are glowing. What do you think about that? You™d probably feel like the results might not be all that authentic. Instead, when there are negative reviews, it actually can lend credibility to the product (and site) because people know the reviews are actually genuine. Negative reviews don™t immediately turn people off. They read them and consider whether the negative would actually bother them. For example, someone ranks a product 1-star and says “this didn’t work on my Mac.” Well, if you have a PC, you aren’t worried. Simple example, but you see how it works.

“I have taken lipitor for many years and have recently developed chronic inflammation of the pancreas and a triclycercide count of 636. I am not overweight at all, don’t drink, exercise and eat healthy. Can lipitor cause this.? [note: comment unedited]“

“I am a 62 year old female who with out this I can not walk to shop or any thing in my home that took any being on a step stool or walking in my home, now I can walk 8miles to do shopping, do the shopping & with a full 4 wheel personal cart walk back. [note: comment unedited]“

“The financial crisis currently spreading around the world has exerted negative impacts on both the pharmaceutical and biotech industries,” according to a Life Science leader article (see “The Impact Of The Financial Crisis On The Pharma And Biotech Industries“). “A large number of R&D programs have been either cut or put on the shelf.”

The chart below summarizes the number of pharmaceutical and biotech companies that announced restructuring plans between September 2008 and April 2009 (click on chart to for an enlarged view):

With regard to advertising, respondents to the Pharma Marketing News “Future of DTC Advertising” survey (here) are still pessimistic about 2009 (see chart below). While 52% of respondents who took the survey in 2008 predicted a decrease in spending, 62% who took the survey in 2009 predicted a decrease (vs. 28% and 23%, respectively, who believe spending will increase in 2009).

(Click on chart for an enlarged view.)

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – Update on the Pharma Financial Crisis

For moderate to severe dry eye
Conserve tears for all-day relief

Once-daily, preservative-free Lacrisert extends tear life for all-day lubrication and protection.

For more information, visit www.lacrisert.com or call 1-877-ATON-549

Brand name: Lacrisert
Generic name/category: Hydroxypropyl cellulose, Ophtalmology
Company: Aton Pharma
Country/Market: USA, North America
Indication(s)/use: topical ophthalmic protectant and lubricant
Target: Healthcare Professionals (HCP)
Tagline: Conserve tears for all-day relief
Publication: Ophtalmology Times June 2009

You’ll notice about the smallest fair balance fine print I’ve ever seen, but they’ve got it there. Their branded tweet was this:

After this went out, the industry bloggers promptly went into action. It was started byRoss Fetterolf, VP Digital Strategy at Ignite Health, who called this tweet “A Historic Day.” He closed his post with this: “I wonder if Charlie’s 125 followers have their Levemir flexpen’s primed and ready to inject along with Charlie when it’s time for his next dose. We’ll have to wait and see.” On the other hand, John Mack published a blog post about this tweet called: “Novo Nordisk’s Branded (Levemir) Tweet is Sleazy Twitter Spam!” He called the tweet nothing more than a “reminder ad.” John further added: “A reminder ad of any sort — whether in print, TV, Web, or Twitter — is, IMHO, a form of spam. I consider, therefore, Kimball’s unabashed product endorsement Tweet a particularly sleazy example of Twitter spam. We certainly do NOT want to see more Tweets like this and I disagree with Ross; I sincerely hope that this Tweet is NOT used as a “model” for other drug companies who want to adopt Twitter as a marketing vehicle.”

I’m with John here. But there’s been quite a lot of debate back and forth on this. Supporters of the tweet say that those with diabetes do talk about the brands they use all the time in everyday language, so this is normal for them. Others, like me, might agree with that, but don’t agree that any person would normally mention their drug’s generic name and where to find prescribing information. Can’t quite picture that coming up in conversation.

I’m fine with Novo Nordisk trying this. In fact, I applaud them for doing it. I also realize the realities of what can be tweeted and what can’t and how fair balance must be used. Debate continues on how pharma can do branded tweets that are even better. However, has anyone stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t a feasible channel for pharma brand marketing? Maybe disease state information, but not branded information. John Mack also thought of this idea: “Charlie Kimball’s [the driver who Novo Nordisk sponsors] Tweets would be much more interesting if he stopped posting about cleaning his race suit, taking Levemir, etc, and told us a little bit about how he FEELs being a race car driver with diabetes, how he deals with the unique problems his medical condition gives him, etc. THAT would truly be inspirational!”

That I can get behind. The reality is that if you do have to include fair balance in every tweet, you can’t have authentic conversations, which is what Twitter is all about. Stop trying to get a brand message into everything, pharma friends. That’s not the answer to everything.

However, knowing that my comments or John’s are unlikely to dissuade the most determined pharma brand manager, those of us at the conference tried to think of a tool that pharma could use to Tweet without worrying about running into regulatory issues. Steve Woodruff came up with the big idea. Twegulate. Well, I couldn’t help but run with the idea, so I rushed back to the hotel and created it. Here it is for the first time anywhere…Twegulate:

What’s great about Twegulate is that Important Safety Information (ISI) is automatically included in every tweet. You can’t adjust it, you can’t delete it. Because the ISI is so long, it doesn’t leave many characters for the rest of the tweet, but you do get a full eight characters. You can use this to add updates such as: “Not much” “Hello” “Good Bye”. Not hugely engaging, but it’s a start.

Unfortunately, I don’t expect Twegulate to be launched anytime soon. We really don’t need it. As it stands now, pharma companies are doing it on their own with existing tools. Our automated tool probably doesn’t have a market. Oh well, so much for retiring this week.

Source: Dose of Digital – Twitter App Just for Pharma Regulations: Twegulate

You can follow all the goings-on at right here. Through the magic of Twitter, you’ll get live updates from me and many industry leaders who are also here.

If you have questions, send them in. Chances are someone here can answer it.

Source: Dose of Digital – Live From CBI Emerging Media Pharma Conference

I realized not long ago that the other question I get all the time is around specific pieces of data relating to digital. I get questions like: “What percentage of doctors have smartphones?” (Answer: 64%) or “How many people in the US use the Internet for healthcare information?” (Answer: 145 million).

So, instead of answering these questions one at a time, I started a little list. It’s grown a bit to the point where I think it’s useful. I hope to add a great deal more to the list over time and would invite you to help me.

Today I’m announcing the launch of the Pharma and Healthcare Digital Data Bank. Submission instructions are included in the page. So, if you see a stat that people would find helpful, let me know.

If you find the Data Bank helpful, please  send a tweet, update your LinkedIn or Facebook status, and/or whatever your preferred means of sharing is. You can just copy and paste this: “Pharma and Healthcare Digital Data Bank. http://bit.ly/eaMMz (via @jonmrich)” Thanks!

Source: Dose of Digital – Pharma and Healthcare Digital Data Bank Now Live

In case you missed it (and welcome back to Earth if you did), Apple is releasing yet another version of the iPhone: the 3GS. In today’s post, I’m not going to tell you why this upgrade is going to dramatically change the way pharma markets its products using digital. Because it won’t.

However, one other announcement from Apple came out at the same time  and went largely unnoticed. This little detail will change the way pharma markets its products in digital. While explaining all the cool features and enhanced speed of the new iPhone 3GS, Apple also told us that the current top of the line model, the 3G, will be reduced in price to $99. $99 dollars versus a current cost of $199 or $299 (depending on memory) is a big difference. $99 is one of the those magical buying points where something starts to look really affordable to people. In fact, in a recent study done by Neilsen prior to the announcement, they noted, “…the second most important factor-noted by 20% of respondents-as to why people did not pick the iPhone was its price.” It doesn’t take a lot of calculations to figure out that there’s going to be a huge increase in iPhone sales because of this decrease.

So, how does this affect you as a pharma marketer?

With more iPhones (and any other smartphone with a browser), more people can instantly get quality information no matter where they are. For you, this means in their doctor’s office, a pharmacy, a hospital. It essentially allows patients to immediately double-check their doctor’s recommendations. Picture someone who was just prescribed Lipitor walking out of their doctor’s office. Let’s say they have an iPhone. What’s the first thing they do when they leave that office? If it’s me, I check out Lipitor on my iPhone and see what it’s all about. This is going to become more and more the norm as these types of phones become the standard instead of just another high-tech gadget.

So, when your patient checks out your site on their iPhone, what do they see? Let’s consider our friend who was just prescribed Lipitor. If he checked out the Lipitor site at home. This is what he’d see:

Not a bad looking site. Front and center patient stories. Clear navigation. Good.

What about on the iPhone? The iPhone browser has one big limitation; it doesn’t recognize Flash. Flash, as you know, is what’s responsible for much of the animation you see on the Web today. Chances are that if you see something moving around on a webpage, it uses Flash. As far as the iPhone is concerned, Flash doesn’t exist. So, your very expensive to develop Flash piece (the patient stories) on the Lipitor site looks like this on the iPhone:

No more patient stories. Everything else still works, but you’re missing your big feature and there’s an ugly blank spot on your page that makes it look like it’s broken somehow.

Who else has the problem? I looked through the sites of some of the top-sellers out there and found a few more plus one that does it right (almost).

One that I found that goes on the “needs improvement” list is Actos. Here’s their website:

Here’s the iPhone version:

So long strange, talking, bacon-man (and the sound as well because he does talk in the Web version, but not on an iPhone).

One other site that I actually wrote about very positively in a recent post about addressing caregiver needs, looks great on a full browser, but not so much on the iPhone. It’s Exelon Patch.

Full Web version:

It includes the engaging visuals that really speak to someone caring for someone suffering from Alzheimer’s. However, when you look at it on the iPhone…

All the visuals are gone and you’ve got a page filled with tiny words.

So, is there a way to fix this? Absolutely. What’s more, it isn’t very difficult to do. Correcting the way your site displays content is critical so that users of smartphones (including the iPhone) can view it properly, but there’s one other even more important reason you need to ensure that you have an alternative to Flash on your site. It’s called Google. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Turns out that Google doesn’t like Flash all that much either (at least Google’s spiders don’t). Google cannot read Flash. It basically doesn’t exist. This oversimplifies the issue a bit, as Google can see some elements of the “behind the scenes” parts of Flash, but for the most part it can’t. Here’s a good article explaining some of the details if you’re interested. So what if Google can’t see it? If it can’t see it, it can’t index it, which means it can’t consider it in the rankings for search. Bad news.

So, here’s the deal. You’re beautiful website…

…looks like this to a search spider:

Not pretty, but that’s okay. Google doesn’t rank on pretty. However, it’s not okay if all your important keywords aren’t showing up here. If they are buried in the Flash, Google doesn’t see them. In this case, much of the content of the Iams site is contained in Flash and isn’t seen by Google. Interested in seeing how your site looks to Google? Here’s a great tool.

It turns out that there’s a great compromise that is a really simple programming fix and one that you should be requiring your digital developers to do. Essentially, you create two versions of your website. Relax, it’s not twice the cost. All you are going to do is create second version using some programming techniques that ensures all of your content that was included in your Flash piece is visible to search spiders. You can direct which page is seen through a really simple programming technique that allows you to check either browser type or other parameters that ensure the right visitor sees the right page. So, you can show search spiders one thing and regular people another. You can also show an iPhone version to iPhone users. You don’t need to understand the technicalities of how to do this, but if you really want to, contact me and I’ll get you in touch with one of our developers (no charge of course).

Let’s just see what it looks like. Someone in pharma has done it ALMOST perfectly. This is the normal Web version of the Seroquel website (note that I cut the page off a bit):

There’s a big Flash piece right in the middle of the page that feature some patient stories. It’s nicely done and looks great, but as we now know, the iPhone (and Google) isn’t going to like it very much. But, AZ (makers of Seroquel) handled this the right way. Here’s the iPhone version:

What you see is that the site explains that it’s optimized for Flash and gives you directions on how to install Flash if you don’t already have it. You still lose the stories, but at least you don’t have a big blank area on the page that leaves people wondering why your site looks broken.

For those paying close attention, you noticed that I said they did this “ALMOST perfectly.” Here’s the problem with this approach. All of the great content that is in the Flash piece is gone. If you use the simulator like I did for the Iams site, none of the patient stories are seen by search spiders. The stories are even narrated and have some good content, but Google doesn’t know about it. However, it’s possible to take that content out of the Flash file and display it essentially in transcript form only for search spiders. You have the transcripts already (because your regulatory team demanded them), so adding this to your site isn’t a big deal. It won’t mess up the look of the site because you can program it so that only search spiders can see the text. It’s a simple fix, but one that is overlooked pretty regularly. With all the competition out there for important keywords in Google’s rankings, you need all the help you can get. Why leave out big chuncks of content when you don’t have to?

In addition, you could invest a little more and make a non-Flash version of the patients stories that is going to be viewable on an iPhone. That was the point of this post after…optimizing for an iPhone. So simply saying, “Sorry, you’re out of luck because you don’t have Flash,” how about offering an alternative using static images or some other technologies that mimic Flash, but without some of the issues?

The big takeaway…make sure that people who are using smartphones can see your website the way you want it seen. Do a little experiment and find out what your site looks like to iPhone users. If you’re not happy with it, contact your developers and figure out how to improve it. Don’t leave your site with a gaping hole in the middle of it. This doesn’t instill confidence among visitors. At the same time, make sure that you are truly optimizing for search. The two really go hand in hand. If you have an issue with how your site displays on the iPhone then you probably have an issue with how Google sees it too.

So, go out and wait on line for a new iPhone 3GS today (or just ask to borrow a friend’s if you’re not quite that gung-ho).

Source: Dose of Digital – Is Pharma Ready for the New iPhone (or any iPhone)?

Ever ask yourself what the best of the best are doing in digital marketing for pharma and healthcare? I do. That’s where I get many of the ideas you see on this blog: watching the best of the best. As I’ve reviewed the best over the years, I’ve realized that they have a few things in common. They all do the same things really well. What I found was that this wasn’t a list of hundreds of things, but that they do four simple things really well and really consistently.

I also realized that this wasn’t just the framework for best in class digital marketing in pharma and healthcare, but that it also probably applies to every other industry as well. If you can follow this framework and successfully hit on all four areas of this framework, I can guarantee your success in the digital space. If you’ve set up your digital strategy well and ensure that it ties to brand objectives, this means that it’ll also drive sales for your brand. Not sure if your digital strategy is actually having a brand impact (i.e., sales)? Then you’d better check out my last post about following your customers’ path for success.

The four tenets of a winning digital strategy in pharma and healthcare

Partner

This simply means that you allow your customers to help set the agenda for the site. You allow them to drive the conversation, recommend what’s important, and/or customize the site to suit their specific needs. In other words, you don’t tell them what’s important, they tell you (and, therefore, other visitors) what’s important.

One great example is Sermo. Sermo doesn’t create the content to tell you what’s important. The doctors that use the site do this. These doctors essentially own the website.

Provide

This is the simplest to describe, but the hardest to do. Provide here means providing tools to help people manage their disease. There are an infinite number of ways you could do this and tools you can create, but the key is creating something that people will find useful and will help them better deal with their disease.

The site that does this best, in my opinion, is Patients Like Me. What makes Patients Like Me stand out is not necessarily the range of tracking tools it makes available (though they are well done and numerous), but rather how the tools can be used to compare your progress to that of other patients. What many companies fail to do well when creating tools for disease management is give you a compelling reason why you should regularly spend time inputting your information in the tool. That is, what will the patient get out of it if they do use it everyday? Getting someone to adopt a new habit like this is very challenging, but as Patients Like Me has shown, it can be done if there’s a real perceived value. This needs to be made clear to people when you initially tell them about the tool otherwise they won’t use it.

The additional value that Patients Like Me brings is that the data you input can be compared to others taking similar treatments or at the same stage in the disease. This leads to you being able to see aggregated data to know what you might expect in the future. All of this allows a patient to see right away how they are doing against “the norm.” It’s very comforting to know that you’re not doing worse than others, but in cases where you are, there is also a clear idea of what might be better. If you haven’t fully explored this site, go do it now.

The tracking tools are fairly straightforward on Patients Like Me, but…

…the data you input is used to form an aggregate of the entire community allowing you to see what others are experiencing and how you compare. That’s what makes it unique.

Balance

This is another one that’s hard for many companies, not just pharma and healthcare. The balance here is balance between brand needs and user needs. Many companies struggle because there is always pressure to get in all the brand messages you can, whenever you can, and as soon as possible.

The best of the best marketing (not just digital) manages to balance two important elements: brand goals and user goals. You really can™t do one without the other. If you only worry about brand goals, then you end up with a big list of product features that no one cares about. If you focus entirely on user goals, then, well, you go out of business. You can do both simply by knowing when to sacrifice one for the other. Providing content in a manner your customers are going to understand and in a medium with which they feel comfortable, delivers on the promise of meeting user goals. You can then add in your specific brand messages and check that box as well. Brand needs and user needs.

Who’s doing this well? Actually, a lot of pharma and healthcare companies do this well…on their unbranded sites. When it comes to their branded sites, it’s a different story. These are very heavily weighted towards brand goals and not user goals. One program I like a lot that shows that you can balance both is for the drug Suboxone, a treatment for opioid addiction. People can start at Turn to Help to learn more about addiction and what treatments are available. Regularly visitors to the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki will also know that this program includes the first MySpace site for any pharma brand, Addiction411. This is another unbranded page that deals with helping people determine if they have a problem.

Eventually, Turn to Help (above) points to the Suboxone brand site, but not before educating users about addiction and which treatments might be appropriate for them. Brand needs and user needs are both met during the user journey.

Yet another site that does this extremely well is Children with Diabetes. This site was purchased by J&J in 2008 and remained largely unchanged, but required a few tweaks to get into regulatory compliance. To give you an idea of how much user needs are balanced against the brand needs, you’ll barely see any mentions of J&J’s diabetes products on this site (J&J company LifeScan makes OneTouch). In fact, if you click and enlarge the picture below, you’ll notice that the advertisement in the upper right isn’t for OneTouch, but rather from one of their competitors. J&J let’s anyone advertise on the site, which essentially opens users to all the options available instead of just their products. Can you imagine a Crestor ad on a Lipitor page? That’s basically what this is. Perhaps this goes too far in giving into user needs.

Enlist

This means that you get the help of experts when you aren’t the expert. Too many companies pretend to the be the absolute expert in everything related to their brand and the category. That’s really hard to pull off. What ends up happening is that you aren’t an expert in anything (or perceived that way by customers, which is all that matters). Instead, pick one thing and be the expert in that. Going back to OneTouch, for example, this might mean they should focus on being the experts in diabetes testing. Not diet. Not exercise. Testing. There already are experts in the others, but OneTouch has a solid rationale for owning diabetes testing. Once you establish yourself as an expert, then you are also responsible for referring people to experts in other areas. So, if someone wants diet information, then you should have a ready list of places they can go. This is what consumers expect today. They don’t expect you to know it all, but rather, they expect you to be the best at one thing. Why else would they be talking to you? If you are trying to do too much, then you aren’t going to be seen as an expert.

Even the website that claims to be an expert in healthcare overall doesn’t try to do it all in every disease state. Instead, WebMD enlists help from multiple physicians (who are experts in their field) to help keep the site on the right path and to ensure the information that goes out is seen as “expert” in every way.

Summary

Follow these four tenets to get on the same path as the best of the best healthcare digital marketers. Partner, Provide, Balance, and Enlist. They all have one common thread: adding more value to consumers beyond just your brand. Of note, none of these says go out and do some social media based projects specifically, but I bet many people will take it that way. Instead, look across all the channels available within the broader digital channel and you’ll see that you can accomplish each of these four without social media. So, if that’s an issue at your company, you can’t use it an excuse here.

Can’t get to all four? No problem. Any one of these is better than none and is a huge step in the right direction.

Source: Dose of Digital – Become the Best of the Best in Digital Healthcare Marketing

Aside from real time information, the thing that struck me was actually a neat little web2.0 widget that Fred mentioned from his own blog, which I read regularly but had not noticed, called Blogrollr.

Now, rather than have a typical static blog roll that you have to keep updating, Fred asked the audience on his forum whether anyone knew of a more dynamic solution that shared with his readers what he was reading.  Up came the suggestion of Blogrollr and so I thought it was time to try it out on this blog, which has a lot of medical content and see what emerged.

This was the result after I set mine up yesterday and let it run for a day to see what I actually browse:

You can let it record all RSS feeds, but I chose to select Technorati registered sites, which would mean blogs rather than any website.  The reason for this is that I do a fair bit of competitive intelligence and confidential research for Pharma clients, so it would not be appropriate to reveal that information publicly.

The biggest problem I’ve experienced so far was clicking on a single item for some blogs in my Google Reader and the widget displayed the last 20 or 30 items, whereas in reality, I only clicked on the home page of the blog and exited after reading the most recent post.  A little disconcerting perhaps, as was finding that some corporates had clearly registered their websites, so they were unfortunately showing up along with the blogs I did want to see displayed.  I may need to do a little tweaking, but will try it and see how it goes.

My hope is that the Blogrollr will be a living breathing record of what I browse and change over time.  It will be interesting to see how the longitudinal analysis works out.  At the moment, you can see the widget in this blog post above, but I hope to have it up in the left margin this week once I have figured out how to do that in Typepad.  Whether it will be useful or not, I’m not sure yet, providing I can hide websites and only show blogs, I’ll be happy.

What do you think? Anyone else using it?

The “longest-serving provider” mentioned by Chase is Postgraduate Professional Services (PPS), which is a special kind of CME provider: a MECC, shorthand for Medical Education Communication Company. MECC’s are independent profit-based companies many of which have been set up by advertising/marketing agencies. MECC’s were a convenient way of establishing a “firewall” between the agency’s promotional side and it’s medical education side. OIG and ACCME demanded that pharmaceutical companies establish such “firewalls” between marketing and physician education.

MECC’s are having a hard time and they blame it all on regulations such as the one I just cited.

œThe CME enterprise has gotten bogged down in disputes, misconceptions and misguided regulatory initiatives, charges Jon Bigelow, president and CEO of KnowledgePoint360, which owns PPS. œMany of pharma’s critics have gone to illogical extremes that will hurt the healthcare system and patient care. In this environment, neither supporters nor providers can plan effective activities to meet the long-term needs of busy practitioners.

Will the healthcare system in the US be “hurt” if all for-profit CME providers went out of business?

To answer that question, I accessed a survey that Chase cited in his editorial: the 2008 AAMC/SACME Harrison survey. One of the survey’s conclusions was that 121 out of 145 commercially-supported (ie, pharma-supported) CME activities offered by the average medical school would not have been offered without this support. The average school offered 147 CME courses, which means that 99% (145/147) of medical school CME courses are commercially supported. In fact, 54% of the revenue for academic CME in the US comes from commercial support.

The situation is different in Canada. There, only 14% of academic CME revenue comes from commercial sources (see chart; click on it for an enlarged view).

I don’t see how Canadian healthcare has been hurt by this lack of commercial revenue for academic CME.

But MECC’s, which are in competition with medical schools that have their own CME departments, are being hurt. Perhaps most MECC’s can go out of business and it would not affect the academic CME community much. [The mean pay for an academic Director of CME in the US is $80,000, according to survey cited above. At that salary level, academic CME departments probably would have no problem hiring out-of-work MECC personnel.]

Not too long ago, Pfizer announced that it will no longer directly fund CME courses provided by for-profit, third-party companies (ie, MECC’s) although it will keep paying for courses offered by med schools, teaching hospitals and medical societies (see “Pfizer to stop funding for-profit CME“).

That’s when PPS’s fate was sealed. According to KnowledgePoint360 Group/PPS’s LinkedIn page, the company’s employees are well connected to Pfizer! Maybe, too well-connected I would say.

Whether or not bypassing MECC’s will eliminate bias in commercially-supported CME is open for debate. The following are some comments about Pfizer’s decision received so far from the ongoing survey: “Is Pharma Sponsored CME Biased?” [Iinvite you to take that survey here. Afterwards, you will be able to see a summary of the de-identified results to date.]

“Maybe Pfizer was working with the wrong for-profit, third-party company [JM: PPS?]. There are a lot of honest for-profit, third-party companies. I find that most pharmaceuticals reps focus on sales and are not aware of the guidelines or do not know how to set boundries. As a MECC I inform them of the guidelines and I work at keeping informed i.e. OIG, FDA, ACCME, Stark Laws etc etc etc. It’s a job just trying to interpret all those requirements and then try to figure out the pharma’s own internal guidelines. Does it really matter where the money goes if spot checks are not done to determine if a CME provider is including marketing with educational materials i.e. print material that are the same color as the product packaging etc. I think that ACCME should include some marketing people in there site visits.”

“It’s probably easier for Pfizer to use this model because the for-profit, third party companies are the gray area. However if the argument is that courses paid by the pharma industry are biased simply because they are company funded courses, then it really doesn’t matter if a med school, teaching hospital or medical society provides the eduction. They would be inherently biases because of the funding. Non-profit does NOT equal unbiased.”

“I don’t see any evidence that med schools and societies are any less biased or less beholden to pharma dollars.”

“The Pfizer response is a last resort. Medical societies and med schools are motivated by revenue streams to a significant degree and will be subject to significant influence once the magnitude of funding and competition for these unrestricted grants increases. In addition, med schools and societies are not currently capable of providing an adequate volume of CME courses/materials to satisfy the current need. It will take several years to build up capability. Once an institution makes a significant investment in staff and infrastructure, the need to continue to attract large amounts of grant money to support the CME operation will create the a real potential for programs that are not completely independent. In addition, societies and medical schools have complex relationships with pharmaceutical companies since they partner in both clinical and preclinical studies. These relationships could result in unintended influence on CME programs. Until the learner drives the financial process, truly independent CME will not be achieved. Since physicians are often reluctant to finance their own education, perhaps pharmaceutical companies could (as a group) fund a large independent foundation that could provide financial “assistance” equally to all physicians who could then individually choose (and pay for) courses and materials based on content and quality. This would encourage physicians to participate in CME programs while preserving the competition between commercial CME providers that drives innovation and quality and removes pharma funding from the provider side of the equation.”

“Since MECCs are in the business of CME, they often are the most up to date on changes and have greater resources to ensure that programs are in compliance. Med Schools, etc. often have only one small office which manages hundreds of programs per year which cannot keep up with industry best practices, etc.”

Source: Pharma Marketing Blog – Is CME in the US Doomed? Or Just For-Profit MECC’s?

Coal tar has been shown to have comparable efficacy to calcipotriene, the active agent in Dovonex.

Can be used for generalized psoriasis in combination with biologic agents, systemic therapies, topical treatments, or phototherapy.

www.scytera.com
For samples of Scytera Foam, please call (800) 920-0850

Brand name: Scytera
Generic name/category: coal tar foam
Company: Promius Pharma
Country/Market: USA, North America
Indication(s)/use: chronic psoriasis
Target: Healthcare Professionals (HCP)
Tagline: Elegantly effective
Publication: Dermatology Times May 2009
16 views
Jun 09, 2009

Read more here:
Follow Your Customers’ Path to Success

No, no, not the 1950 classic “All About Eve” starring Bette Davis. I mean “All AboutE.V.E.”

New term, new acronym to remember, but I promise this one will be worthwhile.

E.V.E. Expected Visitor Experience.

Some background. As many of you know, with your help I’ve been compiling the most complete list ofpharma and healthcare social media programs out there (in wiki form). If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out. It’s sure to help you convince your management that you wouldn’t be the first to try something in the social media space. I give huge credit to the intrepid few companies that seem to be willing to stick their necks out just a little further in an effort to pioneer this space. However, while all these programs and sites listed in the wiki are technically social media, almost every single one that is sponsored or controlled by a healthcare company lacks one thing. A proper E.V.E.

Briefly, E.V.E., Expected Visitor Experience, is defined as the set of activities and functions that an average user would expect to find and use on a specific digital platform. That is, does it work like they expect it to work? Does it work like they’ve seen similar sites work?

Let’s take a look at a few examples to help me explain what E.V.E. is all about.

Twitter.

Twitter is all about interacting with others. It isn’t a medium to simply push out your message while completely ignoring what’s going on around you. The corollary would be someone at a cocktail party standing off to the side shouting out random bits of information about themselves. Despite the pleas of everyone else for them to stop and a few earnest invitations to help this person join a conversation, they continue to yell.

All but one (from my experience) of the pharma companies that currently tweet are “that guy.” Standing by themselves, happy to have someone listening, but annoying everyone and ignoring how a cocktail party is supposed to work. Two examples are Novartis and AstraZeneca. A quick glance down their tweet stream and you’ll notice not a single “@” symbol. This tells me they aren’t talking to anyone. Contrast this with Roche, who seems to be interested in at least having some dialogue (check out the wiki for the complete list of pharma Twitterers).

So, if you can’t commit to doing at least what Roche is doing on Twitter, forget about it. As a final check read this great article from AdAge with the simple title: “Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Tweet.” If you come up with a “yes, that’s us” to more than two of these, come back next year.

Facebook.

Speaking of sites that have grown like crazy, Facebook now has over 200 million registered users. That’s a lot of status updates and a lot of potential customers. A few healthcare companies have established Facebook pages. The largest by far is for Gardisil and their mission: “Take a Stand Against Cervical Cancer.” This page has more than 104,ooo fans. By any standard, that’s a lot and it’s a huge amount on Facebook. Question is, does this mean anything? Gardisil has basically treated their Facebook page as an extension of the product site. It’s just information with few common Facebook features. However, their is no “Wall” function or discussion groups. Gardisil disabled these features. There’s no sharing of content with Gardisil, so people can’t pass along and post information related to cervical cancer or anything else.

So, what’s the E.V.E. for Facebook? People expect to interact with others. They share, they chat, they respond to comments and write “LOL.” Gardisil has taken this ability away. Once it’s gone, it’s not Facebook anymore, it’s your brand site. There are good regulatory reasons (probably) why Gardisil has disabled key features, but this still misses the point. If you’re on Facebook, behave like you are. Let people use the site the way they are used to using it. If you aren’t doing this, then I guarantee that people are visiting once and leaving. There’s no reason to come back…just like your brand website.

YouTube.

Yes, YouTube is all about the videos. Or is it? Several healthcare companies have started their own YouTube Channels. One of these is SanofiPasteur. It’s a decent page with a lot of what you’d expect. Company related, PR-ish videos. The videos on their page have all together been watched via the page 820 times in the past 6 months…not exactly blowing the doors off, but a start. But there haven’t been many views of any of the videos.

There’s a reason for this. E.V.E. Yes, she’s causing trouble again.  I said earlier that YouTube is all about the videos, but it’s not. It’s also about the comments. It’s about the response videos that allow you to post a video in response to the one you just saw. It’s about the ratings. You give your two cents and see what other people thought. However, both commenting and ratings have been disabled. It’s simple to do when you upload your videos and many companies gladly take advantage of this. However, in doing so, you’re again pushing people away. You’ve likely gone through great trouble to get them to your page. After all, not everyone wants to go to a corporate healthcare YouTube page when there are so many other options. So, you have them there and quickly they see that you aren’t following “the rules” of YouTube. If they can’t comment or rate your video, you’ve taken away half the fun and they leave never to return.

Question: did that have a positive or negative effect for your brand? Would opening up comments and ratings (or at least one) quickly change your answer to the last question? I believe it would. Again, there are regulatory reasons why people disable these features. It’s the dreaded ADVERSE EVENT. I, of course, think adverse event reporting is somewhat of a myth (read all about it). But, what’s the regulatory issue with ratings? You can’t report an adverse event by selecting 1 to 5 stars. If you’re afraid that your videos aren’t good enough to get good ratings, change your videos. Don’t try to change YouTube.

Blogs.

Blogs are still up and coming a bit and very few healthcare companies have one. Notably, J&J has a vibrant corporate level blog. Centocor used to have one, but it’s since been stopped. These are potentially really strong PR tools and it’s a wonder more companies don’t have them. People actually want to hear from you. Consider this from a recent Manhattan Research study, “More than three-quarters of ePharma Consumers report that they “expect” online customer service from a pharmaceutical company.” You can start your customer service by communicating with a pretty basic blog.

Here’s the rub. You’re going to need to allow comments. If there’s no way to comment, then it ain’t a blog. Comments are an integral and expected part of any blog. People aren’t just reading to hear your opinion, they want to share theirs and hear the opinions of others who also read the same post. It’s expected. It’s E.V.E. It’s fine if you want to spell out your comment policy, as Centocor did. It’s a lengthy set of rules, but at least they are transparent and pretty reasonable in my opinion. The high points directly quoted from their comment policy:

• We generally won’t post comments about products that are sold by Centocor. For product-related questions, you may call our Medical Affairs Information Line.
• Opinions that are outside mainstream science or could be misleading or confusing will not be posted.
• Comments disguised as sales pitches for products or services will not be permitted.
• Comments that don’t directly relate to Centocor or to topics covered on the blog will not be posted.
• Comments that pertain to ongoing legal matters or regulatory issues are unlikely to be posted.

Fair enough. No product discussions. No crazies. No legal questions. Got it. Frankly, every blog has a policy like this, but it may not be written out. I don’t post every comment that comes into this blog. The ones about “enhancement” products that don’t get caught by the spam filter don’t get approved. But if it’s from an actual person about the topic at hand, I post it. That’s me though. Make a rule and stick by it. Remember, comments should ALWAYS be moderated simply to ensure you aren’t posting a bunch of spam. Moderating means you get to approve it before it goes up. It doesn’t mean that you take out all the negative comments that otherwise adhere to your commenting policies. Publish the negative comments. E.V.E. tells us that if someone posts a reasonable comment, they expect to see it on the blog at some point. If it never appears, neither will they again. And the authenticity of the blog goes with them.

Online Communities

When I say “online community,” what do you think? I bet you’re thinking about a back and forth interaction with others, maybe an interaction back and forth with the brand. That’s the E.V.E. when it comes to the concepts of online communities. Recently, John Mack wrote about Crohn’s & Me, which its creator called a “Faux Community.” In fact, John said, “What CementWorks did was to create an unbranded disease awareness campaign called Crohn’s and Me. Its digital agency partner Heatbeat Digital created a website that it calls a “faux community,” which “gives visitors a feeling of community without the risks of open-ended social networking” (I’m quoting from an article in the March 2009 issue of MedAdNews).”

So, the creators of the community, know that this isn’t a real community as their visitors might define it. You can’t talk with others. You can’t talk with the brand. Again, I’m sure the company cites regulatory rules when they decided on this approach. But what’s the real value? Is this really helping anyone? The content is good, as there are a lot of nice videos about patients, so why not just say that? Is it that important to lure people in with the term “community?” John put it this way,”The sense of “community” is heightened by using the phrase “community” as often as possible and inviting site visitors to “join the community” rather than saying “register.” And you MUST join in order to view most of the videos of “community” members who tell their stories.” I don’t have a problem with the fact that people can’t really engage with one another (I do, but not compared to other issues), but I do have a problem when you imply that they can. That’s what the term “community” means online. That’s the E.V.E.

It’s also a little misleading to make people register in order to view your basic content. I know the value getting people to register for future communications, but is it worth it when people don’t get what they expected in exchange for their personal information? I talked about this in a recent post about how to increase enrollments for your CRM program. People reluctantly give you their personal information when they sign up for your programs and they expect that you give them something of equal value in return. If they give you their information in exchange for a community, then you’d better give them a community. Far from getting them closer to using your product, you’ll only push them further away.

When it comes to selling a “community” online, better to underpromise and overdeliver versus the opposite.

So now you know that it’s All About E.V.E. Expected Visitor Experience. Take a look at what you have in the market today or what you’re planning. Does it deliver the appropriate E.V.E.? If not, it might be time to reevaluate. I understand regulations, but it might be better to do nothing at all then to not deliver what people are expecting. Consider that before your next foray into social media.

Jonathan Richman is Director of Business Development for Bridge Worldwide and blogs regularly on pharma e-marketing at Dose of Digital.

Internet advertising, search engine optimization, and sponsored links have long been a source of concern and consternation for pharmaceutical companies, mostly because FDA and DDMAC have been nearly silent regarding whether and how they could be used to appropriately and safely advertise pharmaceutical products. DDMAC historically has stated that they are concerned with “the message, not the media” for drug advertising, and has generally applied the same regulatory framework for evaluation of print and other traditional media to online marketing and other social media contexts.

DDMAC’s appointment of Dr. Jean Ah Kang to develop policies for internet, Web 2.0, and social media marketing reflects the importance that the division places on these marketing channels, but clear guidance from FDA remains elusive. In March, Dr. Kang, a special assistant to DDMAC Director Tom Abrams, said in a podcast interview with the blog “Eye on FDA” that “we [FDA] do recognize the importance of social media, like Web 2.0…we recognize that it’s a reality and that it’s here to stay,” but that “at this time, we can’t actually state our internal plans or our process for further defining the environment.”

Although FDA has been slow to issue any official direction on either the creation or submission of online marketing materials, it did determine that the sponsored links created and posted by these 14 companies crossed the thin regulatory line into “false and misleading” territory. FDA warned each company that its sponsored links did not contain the proper fair balance and risk information required by the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). Since each of the sponsored links contained the name of a drug and some limited information regarding the drug’s indication, FDA’s position is that the companies are making claims and thus are required to include fair balance and risk information in the advertising itself. FDA also cited the companies for not including the full, established generic drug names along with the drug’s brand names, and, in some cases, for making inaccurate statements about the effectiveness of a drug (e.g., suggesting that the product could be used in a broader population than it was approved for). The companies were given fifteen days to respond to the untitled letters and to remove the advertising.

Generally speaking, pharmaceutical marketers understand FDA’s strict rules on promotional materials. They know what is acceptable and what is not; when you can create a so-called “reminder ad” and when you can’t; what risk and benefit information needs to be included in any promotional piece; and when it’s smart to pre-clear materials through DDMAC before introducing them to healthcare professionals or to the public. In this instance, however, in the absence of any concrete guidance from FDA, marketers have been relying on what’s known as the “one-click rule” for risk information – that having the prescribing information and the attendant risk information one mouse-click away from the advertising material was sufficient. We now know that this is not FDA’s view.

So how can pharmaceutical marketers continue to use sponsored links, which are limited to far too few characters to include even partial fair balance information for most prescription drugs? There are a few choices.

• Marketers can continue to use unbranded web addresses for their products. Although Google’s search engine and sponsored links rules generally prohibit an advertiser from using an alias URL to link directly to another URL (e.g., using something like http://www.Heal Your Wound.com to link to a site whose URL actually contains the name of a wound-healing product), Google has stated in response to at least one inquiry that their policy board has ruled that they will make an exception that will allow pharmaceutical companies to allow non-branded URLs in paid search advertisements to be redirected to branded websites.
• Companies whose products do not bear a black box warning can continue to utilize so-called “reminder ads,” which do not make claims about a product, but rather direct the viewer to a product website for additional information.
• Pharmaceutical marketers can also continue to utilize unbranded or “disease management” websites, which are sponsored by companies but which do not advertise any particular drug product; rather, they provide information regarding a particular disease state, therapeutic area, or set of treatment options.

As always, the health and safety of consumers using pharmaceutical products is paramount. However, it is also incumbent upon the FDA to recognize that the internet and social media are critical parts of many consumers’ access to information about prescription drugs. They must issue appropriate guidance to ensure that companies can continue to provide timely and appropriate educational, safety and risk information about their products to healthcare professionals and to the public.

Read the original article at ePharma Summit – CNBC: GSK & Pharma’s Foray Into The Blogosphere

As shown in the chart on the left (click to enlarge), almost 69% of all respondents to the Pharma Marketing News “How to Earn Back the Public’s Trust” survey agreed that drug companies should “greatly expand their patient assistance programs to cover more people (eg, the unemployed).”

Even more interesting, 73% of PHARMA respondents agreed!

Thus, I truly believe that Pfizer employees were instrumental in convincing Pfizer to initiate its MAINTAIN program.

Now, Pfizer should address the other two recommendations from this survey’s respondents: (1) be much more transparent in reporting clinical trial results, and (2) do more to promote comparative studies to prove the efficacy of prescription drugs.

Read the original article at Pharma Marketing Blog – This Survey May Have Influenced Pfizer’s Decision to Offer Free Drugs to Unemployed/Uninsured

I want to remind the pharma industry, however, that while this is a great first step it is still nonetheless a first step. All the good will that Pfizer is generating with this program can easily be wiped out by another sensational media story about another pharma product. These type of programs, reaching out to patients, have to become part of drug companies desire to acknowledge that good medicine leads to good profits and that the people who take our drugs are our customers and we had better treat them with respect and caring.

Thank you Pfizer for taking this step and offering free medication to those who are unemployed. An outreached hand is a great first step in establishing a dialogue with patients and getting back on the road to trust.

Read the original article at World of DTC Marketing – Pfizer takes the first steps toward establishing trust with a skeptical public

Take what has happened to Starbucks recently; It used to be that people would line up for their lattes and espressos at Starbucks and be more than willing to pay $3 + for a cup of great coffee. Then Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds decided to cut into Starbucks pie and now McDonalds sales have increased due to their gourmet coffee while Starbucks is trying everything from instant coffee to ads that talk about price to bring customers back. … I doubt it…once customers try something new and find that it works for them it’s hard to get them back. Starbucks has lost a lot of its customers because the brand failed to deliver the value in customers eyes.

There is a lesson to be learned from Starbucks branding failure that can be applied to pharma. The brand relationship of pharma products and its customers can best be described as sterile and cold. Pharma brands do nothing to embrace people into the brand experience. They provide no value other than the tablet itself thus when some big names go generic is it any wonder that 85% of people switch to generic? Just what has pharma done to increase the value of the brand outside of the product itself?

…One of the greatest asset of any brand today is its customers and customer information. By getting to know their customers better than they know themselves brands can add value that extend beyond the product itself. Pharma has largely ignored its current customers to focus on market share and new Rx’s. That’s a shame because now more than ever people want to form relationships with brands that provide the value beyond the product. There are lot of people searching for health information and want to hear about new treatments and science but for now they will have to spend a lot of time searching the Web for information that pharma has that should be shared with customers in an age of transparency.

Read the original article at World of DTC Marketing – Branding is dead: Long live the brand !

Read the original article at ePharma Summit – Ortho-McNeil Launches Facebook Site for Adult ADHD

Original post:
How to Make the Social Media Risk Worthwhile

Read the original article at AdPharm Blog – Bill Maher on the seriousness of drugs with “X or “Z in their brand name

Read the original article at ePharma Summit – Pfizer has the Highest Social Share of Voice