Last week’s MM&M webcast titled “From Selling Pills to Selling Health Outcomes” was packed with thought provoking material. Joining the podcast were Daniel Hawkins (Clarion Healthcare Consulting), Dennis Urbaniak (Sanofi-Aventis) and Dan Rubin (inVentiv Patient Outcomes).

Daniel Hawkins introduced the current market scenario as follows : the traditional pharma marketing formula; first-to-market and market-share-through-promo-spending, is no longer effective. The sales-rep arms-race is not sustainable and regulatory changes are reducing the possibilities for pharma ‘buying’ MD-advocates and DTC advertising.

This makes it increasingly critical for pharma companies to identify the new customer-centric service improvements that will keep them competitive. One example that particularly caught our attention was the idea that improving patient adherence was a source of competitive advantage. Hawkins pointed to the “Depress” 1996 study, which showed that out of 4500 patients diagnosed, only 400 actually received ‘effective treatment’. The rest either didn’t receive the medication or failed in adherence. Pharma may potentially be the only industry where it was somehow acceptable that over 90% of customers didn’t receive adequate service. Clearly there is a HUGE potential for improvement here.

With the main questions identified as: a) are customers getting the product and b) are they actually taking the medication, we can draw the conclusion that there is an increasing role for IT-enabled pharmacies to become pivotal data providers for pharmaceutical product development and marketing. We are therefore likely to see steadily increasing incentives for pharmacies to become the driving force in connecting closer with patients and monitoring their medication compliance.

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In follow up posts we’ll be examining the take-away points from the other two presentations in the podcast.