Pharma's most-valuable brands 2017

U.S. pharma brands jumped in value almost across the board in Brand Finance's annual look at the nation’s most valuable. The lone exception? Valeant Pharmaceuticals
While Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck & Co., AbbVie, Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb all gained brand value—$500 million, on average—Valeant dropped almost $1 billion. The embattled pharma went from $2.67 billion last year to just $1.48 billion in this year’s tally.
That's quite a turnabout: Just one year prior, Valeant had soared to join Pfizer at the top of the pharma chart, based at the time on its strategy of buying in drug development, with takeovers of Salix, Mercury Holdings and Sprout Pharmaceutical in 2015.
Brand value is different from reputation, which is why pharma could gain industrywide amid the drug-pricing controversy that raged almost all the way through 2016.
Brand Finance also tallies global brand value, and its worldwide pharma report, the top 10 global pharma brands, saw value increase unilaterally. Roche led global growth with a 56% increase in value at No. 1 and a $6.09 billion value.

What Are The Top-Selling Prescription Medications In History?

You may or may not be surprised to learn that Lipitor, a prescription medication for lowering bad cholesterol and manufactured by drug giant Pfizer, is the top-selling prescription drug of all time according to recent reports, which indicate the medication has brought in $148.7 billion in sales over the drug’s 21 years since it was approved in 1996.

What other prescription medications are the top sellers? Humira, Seretide, Remicade, Plavix, Enbrel, Rituxan, Herceptin, Avastin, and Nexium round out the top 10.

Humira, a drug from AbbVie Inc., is used for the treatment of a variety of conditions from arthritis and ulcerative colitis to plaque psoriasis and Crohn’s disease.

Seretide, also known as Advair, is a top-selling asthma inhaler drug from GlaxoSmithKline; a bronchodilator also used to treat COPD.

Remicade, manufactured by Janssen Biotech (formerly Centocor Ortho Biotech) is similar to Humira in that the drug is used to treat Crohn’s disease, plaque psoriasis, ulcerative colitis, and rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis.

Plavix is a blood thinner brought to the market by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi SA, and is designed for patients with coronary artery disease and may help prevent heart attack, stroke, and other heart conditions.

Most people are familiar with most of these drugs, which have brought in billions in sales since approval. For instance, Humira was approved in 2003 and through 2016 had $95.6 billion in sales. Plavix was introduced into the pharmaceutical market in 1997, and has brought in sales of $82.3 billion.

While Lipitor is still a huge seller for Pfizer, the majority of sales are in overseas markets and China since the expiration of its patent in November of 2011.

Many believe that while our new President has vowed to bring down prescription drug prices, it won’t be an easy task, or one that’s tackled during his time in office, considering other obstacles such as trade and tax reform, changes to healthcare, and more.

Top 15 pharma companies by 2016 revenue

Source: FiercePharma

Still, it does feel as if something's happening here. The building tensions over pricing, and a review of the top 15 companies by 2016 revenues, suggests the relentless march forward of drug prices and profits may have slowed. Sales for the top 15 companies were up about 4% for the year combined, certainly not a figure that shows great strides. Four companies in the top 15 saw their revenues fall for the year, while others reported results that would be classified as flat.

The companies prominent in the diabetes field have been under payer pressure for several years now, and sales at Sanofi and Novo Nordisk illustrate that, even if Eli Lilly managed to see some significant gains in diabetes meds in the fourth quarter.

5 Types of Training Every Pharmaceutical Sales Representative Needs

It is well-known that selling is a dynamic profession, and you need to upgrade your knowledge about your products and services constantly to be a successful salesman. But, the task of salesmen in the pharmaceutical sector is tougher when compared to their counterparts in other industries. Here, the prospect (I mean the doctor) has more knowledge about medicines and diseases than the salesman. How does the pharmaceutical representative make an impact on the doctor and how does he help introduce his company’s medicines? The answer – he needs to be as knowledgeable as the doctor himself. When sales representatives join pharmaceutical companies, they undergo intensive one-month pharmaceutical sales classroom training sessions, where they are trained aggressively by doctors and medical sales managers. This is usually a full time certification course. Once this sales training is complete, they go out to the market and work in the field.

The future of pharma's salesforce

PharmaTimes magazine | Katrina Megget*

The future of pharma's salesforce has been a hotly debated topic for years. Now we wave goodbye to one-size-fits-all and embrace a field force fusion

It has been a turbulent few years for pharma's salesforce as the industry has tried to find its feet amid a shifting healthcare landscape. For all intents and purposes, the sales rep should be dead, yet the role remains, and largely intact – albeit head count has reduced and other roles and job titles have sprung up. Indeed, the salesforce of the future is beginning to take shape. And there's even a place for the sales rep, experts say. That's because the new salesforce will be a blend of roles and capabilities.

"The salesforce is changing," says Alan Kidd, business development manager at CHASE. "It's becoming increasingly a mix – an educational and promotional mix, which includes digital and e-detailing, other roles and even health outcomes consultants."

This is echoed by Ryan Wooller, business development director at Star. He says the salesforce of the future will be made up of different role types, deployed in different geographies with messages tailored to reflect the requirements of the local health economies. "The days of the one-size-fits-all national sales team are numbered," he states.

Top 10 patent losses of 2017

Eric Sagonowsky | FiercePharma

Among the many meds that’ll lose patent protection in the U.S. this year are 10 drugs that each contribute in a big way for top drugmakers. Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Takeda, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead are each set to hit the patent cliff this year with some of their respective big sellers.

Together, they brought in more than $10 billion last year in the U.S. and cover a range of indications: multiple sclerosis, HIV, erectile dysfunction and cancer, among others. They’ll be hot targets as generic rivals rush to steal share with cheaper options.

Just when a drug will lose market exclusivity isn’t always clear, with add-on patents and legal settlements occasionally clouding the picture. We've focused not only on drugs that will lose their patent shields in 2017, but those that, because of patent litigation or settlements, will find themselves vulnerable to generic or biosimilar competition.

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

capital.gr | Βασιλική Κουρλιμπίνη

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.