A guest speaker in one of my classes who is an executive at Astra Zeneca brought up one of biggest issues facing marketing at pharmaceutical companies. As of 2009, sales reps are no longer allowed to hand out samples, gifts, or tokens to health care professionals and their affiliates (which includes me as a University PharmD student). From the public perspective, this ritual was contributing to the astronomical drugs costs in America. I got to hear the other side of the story from the speaker. Companies now have limited access to physicians and are struggling to find effective ways to form relationships with practitioners. These relationships were beneficial to both the doctors and patients. The reps educated doctors about the drugs, new indications and research findings, and promoted the use of their products. Patients who are uninsured or can’t afford their medications could get samples to experiment a treatment before spending money on something that doesn’t work. They had access to the same quality of health care as any other patient.
The new policy has changed all of that. It is affecting the marketing of novel, brand name drugs and changing how the companies promote their products. On top of limited access to their target consumers—the prescribers—drug companies are simultaneously undergoing scrutiny in other areas. I sort of feel bad for them. The health care system has created this mess and the pharmas have to take the hit. They spend billions of dollars, and intangible time and resources discovering drugs and getting them approved. Yes, they then make money on them, but only for a limited amount of time. Once their patent expires, the generic drug steals 90% of sales and they can only hope that their name brand product will even survive. On top of all this, they no longer have the freedom to market their products in a way that was working.
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