Pharma Reform

The J P Morgan Healthcare Conference is, among other things, an annual four days of back to back 30 minute presentations by Pharma, biotech, device companies, CROs, and a diversity of healthcare institutions.  C-level presenters, mostly CEOs, trying to persuade analysts and potential investors that they have the business model designed for increasing shareholder value, some bolstered by forward looking statement disclaimed historically based promises for product approvals, revenue and earnings growth,  dividends, and stock buy backs.

The conference is the premiere healthcare conference in the industry and has become “old home week” for industry executives to reconnect, schmooze, and initiate discussions for potential deals.  Getting an invitation is near impossible if you are not among the presenting companies or on the JP Morgan A-list.  I am neither, so I spent last week listening to all the webcasts that are available for the Pharma and biotech company presentations.

Perhaps the single most stunning, yet less obvious (non- investor perspective) “take away” for me was how rapidly Big Pharma is moving away from Primary Care.  With almost 75% of prescriptions now being filled with generic drugs, the trend may not be that surprising.  What is surprising is that the pace of proactive strategic abandonment of Primary Care is far more dramatic than what I believe most people in the industry would want to admit or even realize.

This trend really got my attention when companies with traditional Primary Care portfolios blatantly stated or clearly outlined that they have strategically refocused their pipelines and commercialization efforts to target specialty markets.  With very few exceptions, company presentations were absent references to products or commercial strategies targeting the Primary Care market.  Oncology, neurology, psychiatry, rheumatology, and dermatology seem to be the focus of attention unless you had a Hepatitis C compound in your pipeline.

Again, the interest in specialty products is not surprising.  They command higher prices, yielding higher margins with less onerous managed market intervention into prescribing practices.   From a commercial perspective, specialists represent a smaller, more easily targeted and sales force friendly customer base.   Specialty market physicians and their patients also seek out and are more receptive to disease and treatment information making promotional education a viable and efficient tactic.

The implications of this trend away from Primary Care are clear.  Fewer sales reps needed for calling on Primary Care.  Less need for expensive Primary Care sales and marketing support activities such as purchasing mass market prescription data, coordinating the complexities of territory management and sales reporting, and dealing with sales force related employee relations issues.  It also means fewer industry sponsored educational programs for Primary Care.  Fewer Primary Care clinical trials.   And,  fewer new Primary Care products means Primary Care physicians and their patients will have to be satisfied and content with the treatment options currently available to them.

The real message here is that while Primary Care has been at the foundation of Big Pharma growth and financial success in the past and there may well be exceptions in the future, the importance and interest of Primary Care to Big Pharma is diminishing quickly.  If your expertise or responsibilities include pharmaceutical sales and marketing to the Primary Care market, I believe your days are numbered and you probably have fewer days than you might think.  Specialty products and markets are where the action is and where the industry is headed and it is moving fast.   mike@pharmareform.com

The US government driven (CMS, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) incentivized push for electronic health records (EHRs) has mostly focused on the business logistics of tracking healthcare delivery and associated costs.  And while the proposed Accountable Care Organization concept deepens the utility of EHRs to include quality and clinical outcome performance metrics they also have implicit goals for managing and controlling costs.  Under the guise of better healthcare at lower cost, my impression is that most healthcare systems are probably looking at this more in the context of making sure CMS or insurers are comprehensively billed and that they have a way to verify billing accuracy and any incentive payments have been rightfully earned.

I wonder if we will ever get to a point of exploiting the clinical information hidden in these electronic data files.   Could EHRs ever lead to better real world data to support evidence based medicine?  With millions of patients in the “real world” data sets over an extended period of time you would think that figuring out “best practice treatment guidelines” would be better served than by a couple of clinical trials with a few hundred or even a couple thousand carefully selected patients studied over a relatively short period of time.  Want comparative effectiveness?  You would think this could be determined with the electronic data on thousands if not millions of patients rather than a small statistically designed trial in a single institution or small number of sites.  EHRs could also be useful for identifying treatment trends or determining where companion diagnostics might be most helpful.

The challenges of HIPAA compliance, research regulations, and bioethical considerations are beyond my area of expertise but I feel it would be a unfortunate if they stood in the way of being able to use this valuable information.  There must be ways to design and execute this type of research without compromising patient confidentiality and ensuring patient safety.  I also appreciate the pitfalls, limitations, and scientific critiques of retrospectively data mining to assess and evaluate clinical data.

The value of EHRs goes well beyond the financial implications and benefits.  To realize their clinical potential the data must be accessible; it must be analyzed and accurately interpreted.  This will require a new breed of clinicians with specialization in the design, execution, and reporting of EHR clinical study data.  Clinical interpretation of the data will require therapeutic area expertise, an appreciation for statistics, and a comprehensive understanding of the data set and the nuances of the data limitations.  These are not part-time jobs but rather new job functions (staffed with expertise) that add cost to healthcare initially with cost benefits coming in the form of more cost effective, better treatment outcomes in the future.

The danger will be in executing poorly designed,  “quick and dirty” reviews and clinical assessments without expertise which can lead to misleading or wrong conclusions and potentially adverse or costly recommendations … purportedly supported by data.   mike@pharmareform.com

While it is hard to argue that you don’t need money to discover innovative new treatments for all the complex diseases that continue to cause illness, disability, and even threaten life.  At the same time, Big Pharma has shown that merely throwing money at discovery research won’t necessarily deliver the results you might expect.

As evidenced by many academic researchers and their teams, it is possible to discovered relevant disease targets and disease altering compounds with far fewer research dollars than Big Pharma has been spending over the past three decades.  Big Pharma R & D budgets, however,  are a misleading indicator of investment in innovation.   In other words, when Pharma holds out the total amount they are spending on R & D ($68 billion), you have to know that only about 30% of that is for discovery and preclinical research.  Still billions of dollars for a disappointing drug discovery return on investment.

Here is another way to look at pharmaceutical innovation productivity.  Let’s say the average Big Pharma has a $1 billion per year to spend on drug discovery and preclinical research.  How do you think that compares to what academic labs (or start up biotechs for that matter) have to spend on discovery research?  Maybe a couple million dollars they have secured in government grants?  Yet, dollar for dollar, who’s delivering the innovation? And why?  An increasing number and percentage of innovative new drugs are being discovered in government or government funded public laboratories.

While they may have less money to work with, academic labs have three essential ingredients that increase the probability for innovative drug discoveries;  expertise, time, and a passionate focus for a comprehensive understanding of the science behind their work (e.g., disease, pathophysiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology).

This is not to say that all Big Pharma researchers lack these essential ingredients.  But even if they do have them, these attributes are mitigated by the distractions of organizational expectations, bureaucracy,  and time pressures to deliver compounds rather than understanding the science.  Perhaps most importantly, expertise in Big Pharma is often rewarded with more work (projects, administrative duties, or increased management responsibilities) that removes (mitigates) the expertise, or at least the focus of the expertise, from the day to day work of discovery research.

Sure, more money can facilitates innovative drug discovery but without expertise, time, and a passionate focus on the science, don’t expect to fill your pipeline.    mike@pharmareform.com

There is plenty of discussion, debate, legal maneuvering by state governments, and media coverage dedicated to the potential repeal of healthcare reform legislation in the US.  While many feel comprehensive rejection of the bill is unlikely, others suggest there are several components of the reform legislation that should be redrafted or eliminated outright.

Without getting into all the nuances (e.g., implications of electronic health records or accountable care organizations) of the legislation, the major healthcare reform implications for the pharmaceutical industry include:

• Commitment for fees, rebates, and discounts totaling over $100 billion over 10 years
• Additional 30 million potential patients with insurance and drug coverage

Agreements and other negotiated benefits for the pharmaceutical industry:

• 12 years of data exclusivity for biologics
• No direct government negotiations on pricing
• No reimportation of less expensive drugs from foreign countries

So, for pharmaceutical companies, does it really matter if the healthcare reform bill is repealed?

To answer this you have to look beyond the next couple of years and any politically driven tweaks to the legislation that might take effect as a result of trying to pacify special interest groups, including insurance companies, advocacy groups, and state governments.  Any near-term implications don’t and won’t change the fundamental realities of where the US and global healthcare markets are trending.  These realities include:

• plenty of inexpensive generic drugs to treat many mass market diseases
• an increasingly cost conscious managed market with direct or indirect (mandatory discounts and rebates) price control tactics
• increasing market expectations for premium priced new products to deliver clinically meaningful benefits over other available therapeutic options (with sophisticated expert reviews of new treatment options)
• increasing demands for definitive pharmacoeconomic data to support the relative value of premium priced new products

Any near-term changes, repeals, or tweaks to the US healthcare reform legislation will not impact these fundamental market expectations.  Interestingly, the more the US market moves to a single payer model with increasing government involvement, the more these expectations will drive the prescription drug market.

Regardless, I believe the implications of any repeal of healthcare reform will be inconsequential in the context of the long-term business model implications for the pharmaceutical industry.  Yet, it’s scary to think about the amount of lobbying money being spent right now by big drug companies and the industry to influence this legislation.

I’m sure there are also teams of people at pharmaceutical companies right now working diligently trying to forecast and model all the permutations of legislative repeal.  While a necessary exercise (don’t want to miss an opportunity or provide Wall Street with flawed financial guidance), a laborious review could be a huge distraction and probably a waste of time in the context of what needs to be done for the long-term.

The real focus for pharmaceutical companies should be on enhancing and bolstering their discovery research.  In the end, the pharmaceutical industry and drug company success will be determined by finding better more efficient ways to deliver products that satisfy a much more demanding market that has higher expectations for therapeutic benefits and value.  mike@pharmareform.com

“I’m sorry we have done everything we can do…there is nothing left to try.”

Nobody wants to hear these words, especially as it relates to our health or the health of a mother, father, son, daughter, close relative, or friend.  Most of us have had people in our lives who have heard these words.  From what should be simple to treat infectious diseases to the complexities of cancers and physically debilitating, if not lethal diseases like Alzheimer’s, there remains a huge medical need for effective and safe new treatments.  Too many people hear these helpless words today and even more may hear them in the future as the population ages with increasing life expectancy.

We have seen how financial rewards can drive  decision making and  behavior in the pharmaceutical industry but really… not wanting to hear these words should be the single biggest reason pharmaceutical companies continue to invest heavily in drug discovery research.

It starts with a mindset to discover truly innovative new drugs that are better than what we have available and that can treat diseases we can’t treat today.  It is frightening that the industry has spent so much in the last decade to deliver so little in terms of innovation.  Think about the billions of dollars spent on clinical trials just to get  “me-too” drugs to the market.  It is equally frightening to think of the cash being spent on mega-mergers and acquisitions to source near-term products to fill the depleted late stage pipelines.  Neither of these contributes to bringing innovative new products to the market that wouldn’t otherwise have come to market.  I’m also not sure how long biotech can support the drug discovery needs of Big Pharma before that well runs dry.

I believe the current “product driven mentality” of many Big Pharma company executives today (and Wall Street analysts) is blinding these companies to the long-term solutions to finding truly innovative new products.  I have said it before.  Drug discovery is hard work and getting harder. It is going to take a much deeper, multidisciplinary understanding of human biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and pathophysiology of diseases that most companies only think about once they have a potential therapeutic target or drug candidate in hand (most likely acquired from outside the company in most recent history).

I believe this comprehensive approach to drug discovery is where Big Pharma should be making significant investments.  Choose a therapeutic area of interest.  Find, recruit, and collaborate with world class scientific and medical expertise in that therapeutic area.  Invest in an exhaustive understanding of the disease,  explore beyond the known,  and challenge common principles of disease management.  Don’t just look for a compound, look for a comprehensive approach to treating and possibly curing the disease.

Big Pharma is one of the few place with sufficient resources to fund, coordinate, and execute this comprehensive approach over a long period of time.  I am not suggesting universities and biotech companies won’t continue to be a great source of novel, innovative new drug candidates.  In fact, much of the necessary drug discovery expertise now resides in academia.   At the same time however, I am concerned with Big Pharma moving away from drug discovery and relying on universities and biotech as their primary sources of innovative new products.  Why?

Because… I don’t want to hear… “I’m sorry we have done everything we can do…there is nothing left to try.”

mike@pharmareform.com

The recent disclosures of payments to physicians for speaking engagements, consulting fees, and even royalty payments have come under the scrutiny of industry critics.   Some are probably even embarrassing  to those in the industry.  The publicity clearly has further raised visibility and concerns about the financial influence of the pharmaceutical industry.   Here are 5 ways to eliminate the potential for Pharma Company financial influence:

• To eliminate the financial inducements of speaker fees associated with pharmaceutical industry promotional education programs, medical schools should provide free CME programs to rural or non-medical center community healthcare providers.  To ensure a sufficient number of programs, there should be a national requirement that each medical school affiliated clinician (good speaker, expert, or not) be required to do six medical school sponsored CME programs per year outside their institution  and preferably be given in rural areas.
• Medical School and university affiliated clinicians, in the spirit of independent research, should financially support drug company related trials without pay or compensation from drug companies (no university or institution overhead charges, no pay for staff, no lab fees, etc).  Nominal ancillary pass-through expenses could be reimbursed.  Clinicians should be required to publish in reputable journals  and present the data at major medical meetings without drug company compensation.
• All Pharma requests of Medical School or university clinicians, researchers, or scientists for consulting expertise should be done free of charge (university subsidized) and should be fulfilled by priority of request and existing industry workload of the consultant at the time.  No researcher could consult with the same company more than a cumulative 6 months in a given 5 year period of time. All related travel expenses, including meals provided, would be paid by the university and anything that resembled an exotic meeting location would avert attendance by the consultant.
• Medical School affiliated clinicians and university researchers or scientists could not benefit from any royalties or payments related to their inventions.  All such payments would go to the Medical School or university general research fund to support ongoing research.
• If Medical School or university affiliated clinicians or executives, feel compelled to sit on Pharma Company Boards of Directors or Advisory Boards they should do so without compensation (this includes no stock or stock options).  They should also pay their own expenses to attend meetings, including paying for meals provided.

You are probably saying, “These make no sense.”

Yet, industry critics sensationalizing the highly paid speakers and consultants or Medical Schools and universities going after sales representative pens, sticky pads, and free lunches are, in a very self serving way, distracting the public from the real financial influence of the pharmaceutical industry.

If they were serious about eliminating industry financial influence it would mean giving up hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of industry support and compensation subsidies for Medical School and university affiliated faculty, staff, and their research programs.   Because they have no other financial sources to replace the magnitude of this funding, Medical Schools and universities (and industry critics) have to ignore the fact that these financial subsidies from the Pharmaceutical Industry can have a far greater influence than a sticky pad, a free lunch, or a couple thousand dollars in speaker or consulting fees.   mike@pharmareform.com

As early as the mid- to late- 1980s the market started to become increasingly managed (think formularies) and the availability of many inexpensive generic antibiotics even then made it easy to set superiority expectations for new market entries.

About the same time, the widespread use of antibiotics rightfully started to raise concerns with the Infectious Disease community about the development of resistance.  Armed with microbiology data and clinical studies, formularies and treatment guidelines were developed to encourage appropriate antibiotic use.  Selectively targeted narrow spectrum treatments were preferred to the mindless routine use of broad spectrum agents.  To preserve their antimicrobial activity, the use of some uniquely effective agents was further restricted to prior approval by Infectious Disease specialists.

While these were responsible and commendable actions taken, they presented the pharmaceutical industry with a new set of expectations for developing antibiotics. The message was clear.  If you want your new antibiotic to be used and you want to be paid a premium price for it, you better have the data (comparative effectiveness) to support that it is better than what we already have (including generic alternatives) and be able to prove it is worth the money (comparative value) you want to charge.  And, even if it is that good and costs that much, we are going to make sure it is used selectively in only those patients who absolutely need it.

This wasn’t and still isn’t a very attractive investment opportunity for the industry given the ease of tweaking molecules and the lack of market resistance in other therapeutic categories. Even for companies that decided to have a go at antibiotic drug development, it hasn’t been a very easy road to market.  The few products that have gotten approved and done well were able to demonstrate or at least imply a clinical advantage over other drugs.

Now the industry and the FDA are faced with trying to figure out how to design trials that would allow for fair comparisons of different antibiotics.  Not satisfied with clinical “non-inferiority” the FDA and the industry seem deadlocked in trial design limbo.  More importantly for the industry, the market expectation is for superiority anyway. The company will need near impossible – to – obtain “substantial evidence” in their clinical data to obtain an FDA approved superiority claim needed to promote the antibiotic as superior.

Could other therapeutic categories become similarly unattractive for drug development?  When market expectations and regulatory hurdles become impractical and seemingly financially infeasible pharmaceutical companies will make one of two choices.  They will take on the task in hopes of beating the challenging circumstances so they can charge a super premium price when they bring that superior product to market.   Or, more likely, they will gravitate to therapeutic categories with lower market expectations and fewer regulatory hurdles.

Many pharmaceutical companies will fail making the first choice and many diseases will never have optimal treatments given the second choice.

mike@pharmareform.com

NIH (not invented here) is probably dead or at least dying at most Big Pharma today as is the thinking that companion diagnostics are not commercially interesting because they imply smaller market opportunities.  But, are there other research maxims that need to be reevaluated in the context of the evolving new healthcare market?  Here are 5 to consider changing if your company still thinking this way:

• “kill early, kill fast”

This has been intended to encourage researchers to cut losses by quickly identifying drug candidates that have a high probability of failing in later trials because of safety concerns or lack of efficacy.   Poor Phase 1 or Phase 2 results may raise concerns about mass market use of the product but may not necessarily reflect how the drug candidate might perform in a more targeted population.  Think personalized medicine with companion diagnostics.  A more comprehensive understanding of the disease, product pharmacokinetics, and pharmacogenomics may be needed to avoid killing promising compounds for smaller, targeted patient groups with significant unmet medical needs.

• “what’s the fastest, commercially viable indication that will get us to market”

The thinking behind this was that “we can use the scientific literature and medical education to expand the market.”  This will become increasingly difficult as the FDA, CMS, and the managed market become more demanding for label indications and data to support claims for use and reimbursement.  Relying on traditional sales and marketing tactics to fill the label claim or data voids to expand market opportunities will be less likely and less tolerated in the evolving new healthcare market.

• “if we do that study or analyze that data, we might find something we don’t want to know”

Product liability cases continue to make headlines and the ability for pharmaceutical companies to “bury” findings, mislead the market, cover-up or ignore potential safety issues or inferior efficacy results is becoming increasingly difficult.  Research organizations might as well assume that if they know or suspect an issue, they will need to explore it, get the science behind it, and be forthcoming about the findings.

• “our research is built around (you name the biological target) program”

As many “target-based” biotechnology companies and Big Pharma research programs have found, this is a very high risk strategy of  “either it works or it doesn’t work” (betting black or red at the roulette table).  In the evolving new healthcare market where proven innovation and differentiation are going to be essential for commercial success,  I believe companies that take a more comprehensive approach to understanding the pathophysiology of the disease will have more opportunities to discover and develop ways to intervene in the disease process, will better understand how different targets interact with each other, and will reduce the risk of betting on a single target.

• “we can do it cheaper and better in house”

Market expectations for innovative and differentiated product profiles will make research pipelines more variable than they have been in the past.  The days of merely bringing any safe and effective product through the regulatory development process and onto the market are gone.  Disciplined research portfolio management will eliminate those products that will not meet market expectations, creating more dramatic time gaps, and making pipeline flow less consistent than in the past.  This will require research flexibility of facilities, equipment, and staffing.  While a core team of research expertise is essential to retain in-house, most laboratory, preclinical, and clinical work can now be outsourced to well staffed, competent CROs that often have as much if not more expertise, capabilities, and capacity than the research teams at Big Pharma.  Even at higher per project costs, these incremental expenses will be far lower than the inevitable up-sizing and downsizing of staff or the carrying costs of intermittently idle facilities, equipment, and staffing.

mike@pharmareform.com

More often than not you hear Pharma defend high prescription drug prices as necessary to cover the high costs associated with pharmaceutical research and development.  Over the course of 7-10 years or longer they may spend $1.0 billion or more to get a product to market.  While the time and costs of drug development may be real, the rightfully skeptical healthcare market and patients have never really accepted this rationale for high prescription prices, often pointing to the more visible high cost of marketing and sales.  And now, this high cost of R & D rationale has become even less believable.

What makes this rationale even less believable today then ever before?  The fact that pharmaceutical companies can afford to spend tens of billions of dollars on mergers and acquisitions while dismantling the acquired companies, laying off thousands of employees (including research scientists), and at the same time, reducing the R & D investment the two merged companies might have otherwise spent.

The other area that challenges the credibility of the bogus high pricing rationale is the affordability pharmaceutical companies have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars in fines and settlements for alleged and sometimes proven wrongdoing.

Unfortunately, the billions of dollars spent on mega-mergers and litigation settlements don’t go towards producing any innovative new products.  Pfizer spent $68 billion (equal to the total annual amount of industry spending on R & D) to acquire Wyeth and Merck spent $41 billion to merge with Schering, not to mention the hundreds of millions spent by the two on restructuring, legal, and banking fees.  None of this money went to R & D.

Similarly, none of the $2.3 billion in fines and settlement Pfizer recently coughed up nor the hundreds of millions of dollars of settlement paid by other companies for their alleged indiscretions will go to R & D.   In fact, Pfizer’s $2.3 billion settlement represents more than 30% of their anticipated $6 billion spend on R& D this year.  The $2.3 billion alone would have put any other company in the top 20 of pharmaceutical companies in R & D spending.

So when Pharma says they need high prices to support R & D it is no surprise that the healthcare market and patients recoil with skepticism, frustration, and animosity.

mike@pharmareform.com

The role of the pharmaceutical sales representative (Chapter 9 in Pharmaplasia™) has been waning for some time.  The internet is full of discussions about the sales representative (“detail person”, “detail man”, “detailing”) position being dead, dying, or even obsolete. Some discussions are defensive while others are unrealistically optimistic about a return to the traditional role.  At the same time,  Pharmaceutical companies are trying to balance the challenges of physician access with the fact that pharmaceutical sales has been one of the most impactful marketing tools available.  More importantly, the pharmaceutical sales representative was probably the best way to inform, and yes, “educate” physicians about prescription drugs, especially new products.

There is a lot of blame to go around for why pharmaceutical sales is struggling for survival.  There is a rarely talked about and hidden reason but first here are a few of the more obvious and frequently complained about reasons for why pharmaceutical sales representatives find themselves either unemployed or wondering if they will still have a job at the end of the year:

Some have also postulated that the advent of electronic communications and internet availability of medical and drug information have made sales representative obsolete.  I believe electronic communications should not be seen as a threat or replacement for pharmaceutical sales but rather could be a future necessity for handling the large volume of data available and to explain the complexities of new treatment options.

Some have suggested sales and sales management brought it upon themselves with questionable sales tactics and the hiring of less than professionally or scientifically qualified sales personnel.  While these may have ultimately contributed to the continuing demise of this important position, I believe you have to dig deeper to uncover the genesis of this unfortunate evolution.

Some have blamed management for just about everything and in this case, you don’t have to be very specific, from C-level to front line managers.  Unreasonable expectations and “stretch” sales forecasts drove a lot of sales organizations and individuals to do “whatever it took” to meet those sales goals.  Sales management complied with these expectations and was bound and determined to make their incentive bonuses and ensure their place at the annual sales incentive trip.  Again, “whatever it takes” to make or exceed your numbers.

Marketing often built those sales forecasts out of hubris and pushed the sales organization to deliver while also provided the marketing message and resources to do “whatever it took” to  deliver the sales.  Think of the virtually uncontrolled, unlimited (by standards for most other industries) funding for tchotches, lunch and learns, speaker programs, and of course, samples and literature (marketing materials).  Of course reps were encouraged to fully deploy and leverage all their resources.

Some people like to blame the regulatory environment (constraints on what reps can say and do) while others point to a less tolerant healthcare market (increasingly difficult physician access and institutional limitations on promotion).  These, however, while real, were more a response to increasingly aggressive and sometimes questionable (unethical or illegal?) activities rather than being inherent in the market.

No doubt, pressure on sales representatives to make their numbers was and is intense and often requires incredible selling skills and creativity to compensate for the realities of marginal product profiles given the market expectations and sometimes even harmful side effects of the products they were selling.

This leads us to one of the less obvious sources for why I believe the sales representative position has become threatened with extinction.  And that is,  the lack of credible clinical data and appropriate regulatory labeling to support the commercial claims needed to deliver the forecast sales numbers.  Sometimes the clinical data and marketing messages provided to the sales organizations have even been inaccurate, intentionally misleading, or even concocted.

Solid credible clinical data and regulatory approved labeling to support commercial claims mitigates the need for overly aggressive and questionable sales activities and reduces the regulatory constraints that bar sales representatives from having meaningful clinical discussions with physicians.  It is hard to imagine the level of sales that might have been achieved had the talented, skilled sales representatives been armed with better clinical data and stronger, more definitive regulatory label claims.

Research teams pushed (and senior management was pushing even harder) for approval rather than building comprehensive product profiles to support the commercial expectations.  The get-it-to-market drive for approval to attain indication- based label claims without differentiation or consideration for what sales representatives will be able to say or use in promotion unfairly puts sales representatives in an awkward, boring, professionally compromised, and near impossible selling situation.

So before you blame or criticize sales and sales management for jeopardizing the pharmaceutical sales position, look at the clinical data they had to work with.  You might find that they did a better job than might have been expected and you might find the reasons they felt compelled to go to such extremes in some cases to make their sales numbers.

mike@pharmareform.com