The last issue of 2016, with articles from K. Hariram and Vivek Hattangadi and new authors, Dr. Ashwin Bonde and Diksha Fouzdar. Diksha's article is the highlight of this issue - an in-depth look at how to embed compliance in the very DNA of a pharma company.
If a business fails, it was an idea that didn’t work. If treatment fails – it must be a botch up. A broken gadget may be beyond repair, but not a patient in a doctor’s hands. From such ungraded expectations stems the potential for things to take an ugly turn.
An unwanted profession dealing with an unwanted condition, namely Ill health:
If possible, we would wish away death and diseases, hospitals and doctors. A hospital is not a holiday resort, but it too costs money. And the scenario of an adverse outcome like death simply becomes unacceptable.
COVID-19 has accelerated the shift in how pharma was engaging with HCPs, professional organisations and even patients in India from a sales to more of a scientific, unbiased and balanced marketing communications. As one of the business leader from a prominent MNC said, “For the first time we are seeing a certain shift in HCP’s preference for scientific communication for innovators companies. MSLs and scientific operation teams will be playing a key role in the near future.”
Is Pharma’s business model like McDonald’s? Doing things over & over again without innovation?
McDonald’s is famous for its Hamburger University, a training facility at the McDonald’s Corporation global headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. It instructs high-potential restaurant managers in restaurant management.
More than 5,000 students attend Hamburger University each year and over 275,000 people have graduated with a degree in Hamburgerology.
Sound familiar? Pharma’s training has been on similar lines – hire people continuously and put them through the grind of mugging up essentials of drugs for diseases that the particular company sells.
While the McDonald’s model is ideal for its business of replication, it has outlived its utility in healthcare and drug companies are in danger of being reduced to mere suppliers of drugs to new digital platform businesses unless they learn to innovate.