Innovation: Is Big Pharma Talking Differently?

“Nearly 2 billion people have no access to basic medicines, causing a cascade of preventable misery and suffering. Good health is impossible without access to pharmaceutical products.” The World Health Organization’s (WHO) ‘Access to Medicine’ report on ‘Ten years in … Continue reading

Pharma Stakeholder Sentiment: Back to Square One?

Is it fair to push out the core purpose of an important process, or rather a mission, unfairly? Whether we like it or not, it happened that way, over a period of time. Way back on December 01, 1950, George W. … Continue reading

How Cost-Effective Are New Cancer Drugs?

The main reason why cancer is so serious a disease, is the ability of the malignant cells to spread in the body, both locally by moving into nearby normal tissue, and regionally to nearby lymph nodes, tissues, or organs, affecting even … Continue reading

The Stakeholder-Mix Has Changed, But Pharma Marketing Has Not

“We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for profit. Profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they never fail to appear.” In 1952, George Wilhelm Herman Emanuel Merck, the then President of … Continue reading

Unsustainable New Cancer Drug Prices: Resolution Remains A Far Cry

Prices of new drugs for the treatment of life-threatening ailments, such as cancer, are increasingly becoming unsustainable, across the world, and more in India. As articulated by the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 2014, this is primarily due to … Continue reading

Quantum Value Addition With Health Apps, Going Beyond Drugs

Besides all important brand attributes and how well those are communicated to the doctors, the ‘game winning’ differentiating factors in the prescription drug business, as it appears today, would revolve around overall quality of patient-centric approach and offerings of pharma … Continue reading

‘Patent Linkage’: Can The Core Issue Be Resolved?

On February 10, 2015, a leading business daily of India, quoted the Commerce Secretary of India – Rajeev Kher, saying, “India needs to relook at its Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy with a view to bring in a differentiated regime … Continue reading

Paying For The Best Health Outcomes At The Lowest Possible Cost

“Bayer CEO Dr. Marijn Dekkers is happy to have fair Outcomes-Based Pricing”, reported ‘PharmaTimes’ on December 3, 2014. Dr. Dekkers was quoted saying, “It is okay to be tested on that in the process of price-setting, that is fine, we should … Continue reading