The Importance of Managing ‘Perception’ in Pharma

The Importance of Managing ‘Perception’ in Pharma

Each one of us – individually or collectively in a society, community or even as a supporter of anyone or anything, view certain things in a certain way, and tend to believe only this is true. This process consequently leads to developing a ‘perception’, which the Oxford dictionary defines as: “The way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted.”

A ‘perception’ once formed, creates a long-lasting impact – helps form a strong opinion, often making people judgmental in their expressions. Based on ‘perception’, people also try to act and influence others, which are not always in a persuasive manner. On the contrary, the methods, are at times rather coercive, using fear as the key. The sources that help create ‘perceptions’ may not be genuine, often fake or doctored and picked-up from half-baked, unproven and unverified provenance.

Just as any other business, in pharma industry too, stakeholder ‘perception’ plays a critical role, especially in building or tarnishing reputation of the sector or individual companies. In this article, I shall discuss, the importance of managing perception – the right way – overcoming a key barrier, for sustainable business success.

‘Perception’ often stands between success and failure or winning and losing:

In today’s world ‘perception’ often stands between success and failure or winning and losing, more than ever before. Creating and maintaining a ‘positive perception’ is time consuming and a challenging task, for anything. Interestingly, a negative ‘perception’ may also be deliberately created for self-serving purposes, and that too in a much shorter time. Although, there is a high financial cost attached to it, such instances aren’t too few, either.

Umpteen number of instances can be cited, in this regard. However, to drive home the point, let me quote just two examples – the first one is of a negative ‘perception’ mostly created by the industry from within. The other one – again a negative perception that prevails outside the industry, but mostly created due to the acts pursued within the industry. Interestingly, both these adversely impact the pharma consumers too, and are tough to neutralize.…continue reading…

For Patient-Centricity: Emerging a C-Suite Role

For Patient-Centricity: Emerging a C-Suite Role

Regardless of skepticism of many, the formidable power of physicians to take all treatment decisions for patients, is gradually getting moderated, globally. Although, its pace may vary from country to country. An increasing number of more informed patients are carving out a greater role for themselves in this important process.

The central focus for brand demand generation can no longer remain just on the doctors. This is because, as I wrote this in my article, published in this Blog on July 06, 2015: “Slowly but steadily the process of taking treatment decisions for the patients is undergoing a metamorphosis, where well informed patients no longer want to play just a passive role. These patients want the doctors to take a final decision on their treatment only after meaningful interactions with them.” Besides a broad prescription pattern, this includes the medicines that they will consume, including meaningful details on product cost against the benefits to be accrued.

The age-old practice of doing a little bit on patient education or compliance, are grossly inadequate in an evolving new scenario. The good news is, many pharma companies have started realizing that appropriate engagement with patients to deliver what they want and more, can lead to better financial performance.

Consequently, the ball game for prescription demand generation is showing early signs of a change – somewhat radical in nature. To spearhead this unavoidable metamorphosis for the organization, there surfaced a brand-new role of a CxO – The Chief Patient Officers (CPO).

This new senior management position is expected to direct organizational focus on patients. Understand their concerns, needs, wants and goals, particularly in the disease areas where the company represents. And finally, give shape to new multichannel well-coordinated platforms of patient engagement, for better commercial returns. In this article, I shall try to explore how this transformation pans out, if at all.

The direction is right, but patients must feel the change:

As I said before, some pharma players have started accepting the reality. The crucial need for an organization to become ‘Patients-Centric’ can’t be wished away anymore. For example, a 2015 “Industry Healthcheck” survey where 1600 pharma executives participated, found that 85 percent of respondents agreed that ‘Patient-Centricity’ is the best route to improve profitability, in the fast changing business environment.…continue reading…

The Hype of Digitalization in Pharma Marketing

The Hype of Digitalization in Pharma Marketing

Having access to the fountain of knowledge residing in the cyberspace, fueled by word of mouth information and aided by social media, patients’ behavior is fast changing globally. Its degree may vary. But the change is real. The good news is – in a digital world of today, people are talking about ‘digitalization’ to rejuvenate per dollar productivity even in the pharma business, while navigating through a strong environmental headwind.

But, the bad news seems to be, that many pharma players, especially in India, can’t possibly quite fathom, just yet, the profound impact of the changing customer profile. With the hype of ‘digital marketing’ and associated cacophony, most of them seem to be focusing on automation of various processes with digital tools, rather than a customer-centric pan-organization digitalization of business. In this article, I shall dwell on the relevance of such intervention in the pharma marketing model, including the processes, before it’s too late for an organization.

The reality – profile of pharma consumers is changing:

It is well documented today that the profile of pharma consumers is changing. There are several studies in this area. For example, the McKenzie paper of November 2014, titled “A digital prescription for pharma companies,” penned some important observations in this regard, as follows:…continue reading…

A ‘Toxin’ Delaying Success of Biosimilar Drugs

A ‘Toxin’ Delaying Success of Biosimilar Drugs

The above comment, although sounds a bit harsh, was made recently by none other than Scott Gottlieb - the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner of the United States. He expressed his anguish while explaining the reasons for a delayed launch of several important biosimilar drugs.

We know, this new genre of drugs has a potential to be a quick game changer, significantly improving access to affordable biologic medicines for many patients. Unfortunately, much desired accelerated progress in this direction, got considerably retarded in the face of a strong headwind, craftily created by the innovator companies, as is widely believed. There are various ways of creating the same. However, the two major ones can be ascribed to:

• Getting caught in the labyrinth of complex patent challenge.
• General apprehensions of many doctors on the efficacy and safety of biosimilars as compared to reference drugs.

This is happening in major markets, including India, in varying degree, though.  In this article, I shall deliberate on this issue, starting with the largest pharma market of the world and then focusing on India.…continue reading…