Pharma's latest idea for getting drug info in front of docs? Give them a single login

Six big pharma companies are joining forces to create a one-step login for doctors and healthcare providers to get drug information. The newly formed Align Biopharma group includes Allergan, AstraZeneca, Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Pfizer, along with life sciences software solutions company Veeva Systems.

They’re banding together to address the problem doctors have in digitally accessing information from pharma companies. While use of digital information among doctors has grown—as visits by pharma sales reps continue to decline—so has the difficulty in managing a wide array of sources.

The goal of the group is to create two industry standards—one for identification and the other for consent and preferences, with work on the identification standard already begun. With one standard, physicians and healthcare providers would be able to use a single login to access an array of different pharma sites.

Νέες περικοπές 150 εκατ. ευρώ στη φαρμακευτική αγορά από το υπουργείο Υγείας

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Με την "πλάτη στον τοίχο” βρίσκεται η πολιτική ηγεσία του υπουργείου Υγείας μετά την εντολή των δανειστών οι δαπάνες για το φάρμακο φέτος να μειωθούν κατά τουλάχιστον 30% σε σχέση με το 2016. Σε απόλυτα νούμερα, το ποσοστό αυτό μεταφράζεται σε επιπλέον περικοπή περίπου 150 εκατ. ευρώ μέχρι το τέλος της χρονιάς, δεδομένου πως πέρσι ο προϋπολογισμός του φαρμάκου υπολογίζεται πως ξέφυγε κατά σχεδόν 450 εκατ. ευρώ.

Ο όρος για περιστολή της υπέρβασης στις δαπάνες του φαρμάκου, ο οποίος άλλωστε περιλαμβάνεται στο επικαιροποιημένο μνημόνιο, είναι εδώ και μήνες γνωστός στους δύο αρμόδιους υπουργούς Ανδρέα Ξανθό και Παύλο Πολάκη, εντούτοις ακόμη να βρεθεί ο τρόπος με τον οποίο θα επιτευχθεί η παραπάνω υποχρέωση.

The World’s Most Reputable Pharmaceutical Companies 2016

Customers’ satisfaction is immensely important for the pharmaceutical companies. When these companies focus on innovation and act responsibly, they gain the required trust from the customers all over the world. Based on how good people feel about big pharma, a ranking has been published by the Reputation Institute (RI). Based on the ranking, we have chosen the following top pharmaceutical companies:

Bayer

Bayer is a German pharmaceutical and life science company which is headquartered in the city of Leverkusen. The company was founded in 1873. The pharmaceutical division of the company focuses on prescription drugs for women’s healthcare and cardiology. It also concentrates on specialty therapeutics in the areas of hematology, oncology, and ophthalmology. Its annual revenue in 2015 was $52 billion.

Abbott Laboratories

Abbott Laboratories is a global healthcare company headquartered in Illinois, United States. In 2015, its annual revenue was $20.4 billion. The company is trying to help people lead healthier lives by creating breakthrough products in branded generic pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, nutrition, and medical devices. More than 74,000 people work in this company, and it is operating in over 150 countries.

Pharma-to-physician social media and app marketing will soar by 2018: report

Pharma companies’ marketing communications to their target audience of healthcare providers are increasingly digital. That's not terribly surprising, considering the uptake in digital channels among physicians for professional use.

What is changing, however, is the way pharma reaches doctors, according to an annual report from from healthcare and pharma solutions provider Indegene. In 2016 in the U.S., brand promotional emails, healthcare provider portals and key opinion leader webinars are the top three ways pharma companies reach out. However, by 2018, KOL webinars, social media and mobile apps will top the list, with social media and mobile apps growing the fastest, by 50% and 27%, respectively.

The social media investment is already underway, which will power the expected usage jump, Urvi Mehta, senior manager, strategic relationships at Indegene, told FiercePharma.

“Social media is a very powerful channel that can help in understanding the end consumers. It’s easy to make marketing decisions like segmentation, course of patient education, and influence adherence through listening and analysis of the social behavior,” she said.

While KOL webinar growth will be smaller at 8.8%, that channel was identified as the best return-on-investment generator by the more than 100 global pharma and life science companies that responded to the survey.

ROI, in fact, is an ongoing concern. Even among the rise in projected spending, seven out of 10 pharma companies noted that demonstrating ROI is the biggest barrier when implementing new communication strategies.

U.S. pharma companies are second globally in digital spending, with 31% of companies spending more than 20% of their budgets on digital. By 2018, Indegene expects that to increase to 40% of companies. China leads with 33% of its pharma companies spending more than 20% on digital, and that figure is expected to rise to 50% by 2018.