Pharmaceutical marketing , sometimes called medical marketing or pharmaceutical marketing in some countries, is an advertising business or promotes the sale of pharmaceutical drugs. Many countries have steps to limit advertising by pharmaceutical companies.
Pharmaceutical company spending on marketing far exceeds its research budget. In Canada, $ 1.7 billion was spent in 2004 to market drugs to doctors; in the United States, $ 21 billion was spent in 2002. In 2005, the money spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States was estimated at $ 29.9 billion with an estimated $ 57 billion. When the US figures are broken down, 56% are free samples, 25% are pharmaceutical sales representatives "detailing" (promoting drugs directly to) doctors, 12.5% ​​direct to user ads, 4% to detail to the hospital, and 2% on advertising journal. There is some evidence that marketing practices can negatively impact patients and health care professionals.
Video Pharmaceutical marketing
To your health care provider
Marketing to healthcare providers takes three main forms: activities by pharmaceutical sales representatives, provision of drug samples, and sponsoring continuing medical education (CME). The use of gifts, including pens and coffee cups stirred under the name of pharmaceutical products, has been banned by PHRMA ethics guidelines since 2008. Of the 237,000 medical sites representing 680,000 physicians surveyed in the 2010 Doctor Access survey of SK & A, half said they prefer or need an appointment to see representatives (up from 38.5% prefer or require an appointment in 2008), while 23% will not see a representative at all, according to survey data. The practice of a hospital or health system is more difficult than private practice, since appointments must go through headquarters, surveys are found. 13.3% of offices with only one or two doctors will not see representatives, compared to 42% non-viewing rates in offices with 10 doctors or more. The most accessible doctor for promotional purposes is the allergist/immunologist - only 4.2% will not see a representative at all - followed by orthopedic specialists (5.1%) and diabetes specialists (7.6%). Diagnostic radiologists are the most rigid about allowing details - 92.1% will not see reps - followed by pathologists and neurologists, at 92.1% and 91.8%, respectively.
E-detailing is widely used to reach "no see physicians"; about 23% of primary care physicians and 28% of specialists prefer computer-based edetailing, according to a survey findings reported in the April 25, 2011, edition of American Medical News (AMNews), published by the American Medical Association (AMA).
PhrMA Code
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing America (PhRMA) released an update to the Voluntary Code on Interaction with Health Care Professionals on July 10, 2008. The new guidelines apply in January 2009. "
In addition to banning small gifts and reminder items such as pens, notepads, staplers, clipboards, paperweights, pill boxes, etc., revised Code:
- Prohibit company sales representatives from providing restaurant food for healthcare professionals, but allow them to provide occasional simple meals at the health-care office in conjunction with information presentation "
- Includes new provisions requiring companies to ensure that their representatives are adequately trained on applicable laws and regulations and industry ethical codes.
- Provide that each company will declare its intention to comply with the Code and that the company's CEO and compliance officer will declare annually that they have a process to comply with.
- Includes more detailed standards on the continued independence of medical education.
- Provide additional guidance and constraints for speaking arrangements and consultation with health care professionals.
Free sample
Free samples have been shown to influence the prescribing behavior of doctors. Physicians who have access to free samples are more likely to prescribe brand drugs than equivalent generic drugs. Other studies have found that free samples decrease the likelihood that physicians will follow standards of nursing practice.
Receiving pharmaceutical samples does not reduce prescription costs. Even after receiving the sample, the sample receiver remains burdened disproportionately by the cost of the prescription.
It is said that the benefits to free samples are "try before you buy it" approach. Free samples provide immediate access to medication and patients can begin treatment immediately. Also, save time from going to the pharmacy to get it filled before treatment begins. Since not all drugs work for everyone, and many do not work the same way for everyone, free samples allow patients to find doses and brands of drugs that work best before they have to spend money on prescriptions filled in pharmacies.
Advanced medical education
Clocks spent by physicians in industry-supported sustainable medical education (CME) are greater than either from medical schools or professional societies.
Pharmaceutical representative
Currently, there are approximately 81,000 pharmaceutical sales representatives in the United States pursuing about 830,000 pharmaceutical prescriptions. Pharmaceutical representatives will often try to see a doctor given every few weeks. Representatives often have a call list of about 200-300 doctors with 120-180 targets to be visited in 1-2 or 3 weeks cycle.
Because of the large size of pharmaceutical salespeople, organization, management, and measurement of sales force effectiveness is a significant business challenge. Management tasks are usually broken down into target areas of physicians, size and structure of salespeople, sales force optimization, call planning, and sales force effectiveness. Some pharmaceutical companies have realized that training sales representatives on high science alone is not enough, especially when most products have similar qualities. Thus, training sales representatives on relationship sales techniques in addition to medical science and product knowledge, can make a difference in sales force effectiveness. Specialist doctors are increasingly relying on specialized sales representatives for product information, as they are more knowledgeable than primary care representatives.
The United States has 81,000 pharmaceutical representatives or 1 for every 7.9 doctors. The number and perseverance of pharmaceutical representatives has placed a burden on physicians. "As the number of representatives increases, the amount of time spent by the average physician goes down - so far down, the tactical scale has spawned a strategic crisis." Doctors no longer spend much time with sales representatives, nor do they see this as a serious problem.
Marketers must decide on the appropriate size of sales force needed to sell a particular drug portfolio to the target market. Factors influencing this decision are the optimal range (how many doctors to see) and the frequency (how often to see it) for each individual doctor, how many patients suffer from the disease, how many sales representatives are devoted to office and group practice and how much to pour into hospital accounts if needed. To help with this decision, customers are broken down into different classes according to their prescription behavior, patient population, and of course, their business potential.
Marketers are trying to identify the set of doctors who are most likely to prescribe a given drug. Historically, this was done by measuring the total number of new recipes (TRx) and prescriptions (NRx) per week written by each doctor. This information is collected by commercial vendors. The doctors were then "parsed" into ten groups based on their writing patterns. A higher decile is more aggressively targeted. Some pharmaceutical companies use additional information such as:
- The profitability of a recipe (script),
- Accessibility of doctors,
- Doctor's tendency to use drug pharmaceutical companies,
- The effect of a managed care formulary on a physician's ability to prescribe drugs,
- The order of adoption of doctors (ie, how quickly doctors adopt new drugs in lieu of older treatments), and
- Doctors' tendency to use various drugs
- The effect that doctors have on their co-workers.
Data for medications prescribed in hospitals are usually not available at physician level. Advanced analytical techniques are used to assess physicians in hospitals.
The doctor is probably the most important component in the sale. They write a prescription that determines which drug to use. Influencing a doctor is the key to pharmaceutical sales. Historically, this was done by a large pharmaceutical salesperson. Medium pharmaceutical companies may have a sales force of 1,000 representatives. The largest companies have tens of thousands of representatives around the world. Sales representatives call doctors regularly, provide clinical information, approved journal articles, and free drug samples. This is still the current approach; However, economic pressures in industry have caused pharmaceutical companies to rethink traditional sales processes to doctors. The industry has seen the adoption of large-scale Pharma CRM systems that work on newer laptops and tablets. The new age pharmacy representatives are armed with key data at the fingertips and tools to maximize the time spent with doctors.
Peer influence
- Lead opinion leader
Key opinion leaders (KOL), or "leaders of thought", are respected individuals, such as the faculty of leading medical faculty, who influence physicians through their professional status. Pharmaceutical companies generally involve key opinion leaders early in the process of drug development to provide advocacy and key marketing feedback. Some pharmaceutical companies identify key opinion leaders through direct inquiry from doctors (main research). Recently, pharmaceutical companies have begun using social networking analysis to uncover thought leaders; because it does not introduce the respondent bias, which is usually found in the main research; it can identify and map the entire scientific community for the state of the disease; and have greater compliance with state and federal regulations; because doctors who prescribe patterns are not used to create social networks.
Alternatives to grouping purified doctors based on prescriptions do exist, and marketers can call strategic partners who specialize in describing the true leadership characteristics of opinion, practiced or not owned by doctors. Such an analysis can help guide marketers in how to optimize KOL involvement as a bona fide advisor to a brand, and can help shape a clinical development plan and publication of clinical data for example, ultimately improving patient care.
- Colleagues
Doctors obtain information through informal contacts with their peers, including social events, professional affiliations, affiliations of public hospitals, and affiliations of public medical schools. Some pharmaceutical companies identify influential colleagues through prescription-writing and commercially available patient-level data. A doctor's dinner meeting is an effective way for doctors to obtain educational information from respected colleagues. These meetings are sponsored by several pharmaceutical companies.
Journal article and technical documentation
Recent legal cases and US congressional hearings have provided access to pharmaceutical industry documents that reveal new marketing strategies for drugs. Activities that were once considered to be independent of promotional intentions, including continuing medical education and medical research, were used, including paying to publish articles on drugs promoted for medical literature, and suspected oppression of unfavorable study results.
Private and public insurance
Public and private insurance affects prescribing by doctors through formularies that limit the amount and type of drugs to be financed by insurance companies. Not only can insurance companies influence the sale of drugs by inserting or removing certain drugs from formularies, they can affect sales by tiering, or put a bureaucratic hurdle to prescribe certain drugs. In January 2006, the United States instituted a new public prescription drug plan through the Medicare program. Known as the Medicare D Part, the program involves private insurance companies to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for placement of drugs on tiered formularies.
Maps Pharmaceutical marketing
To consumers
Only two countries in 2008 made direct access to consumer advertising (DTCA): the United States and New Zealand. Since the late 1970s, DTCA prescription drugs have become important in the United States. It takes two main forms: promotion or disease creation from non-pathological physical conditions or drug promotion. The rhetorical goal of direct advertising to consumers is directly influencing patient-physician dialogue. Many patients will ask about, or even ask for the drugs they see advertised on television. In the United States, the past few years have seen an increase in media advertising for drugs. Spending on direct advertising to users has more than fivefold in seven years between 1997 and 2005 since the FDA changed the guidelines, from $ 1.1 billion in 1997 to more than $ 4.2 billion in 2005, an annual increase of 19, 6%, according to United States Government Accountability Office, 2006).
Mass marketing for drug users is banned in more than 30 industrialized countries, but not in the US and New Zealand, which are considering a ban. Some feel it is better to leave the decision fully in the hands of medical professionals; others feel that user education and participation in health are useful, but users need independent comparative information about drugs (not promotional information). For this reason, most countries impose pharmaceutical bulk marketing restrictions that are not placed on the marketing of other products. In some areas advertising is required for drugs including a list of possible side effects, so users are informed of both aspects of the drug. Canada's limitations on pharmaceutical advertising ensure that ads that name a product can not explain what it does. Ads that mention medical problems can not name the product for sale; at most, they can direct viewers to websites or phone numbers operated by pharmaceutical companies.
Drug coupons
In the United States, pharmaceutical companies often provide drug coupons to consumers to help compensate for copayments imposed by health insurance companies for prescription drugs. These coupons are generally used to promote drugs that compete with preferred products and cheaper generic alternatives by reducing or eliminating the extra costs outside the pockets that are usually paid by a patient in charge for an unexpected drug product.
Economy
Pharmaceutical company spending on marketing exceeds that spent on research. In 2004 in Canada, $ 1.7 billion per year was spent on marketing drugs to doctors and in the United States, $ 21 billion was spent in 2002. In 2005, the money spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States was estimated to reach $ 29.9 billion with an estimate of as high as $ 57 billion. When US numbers are broken down 56% are free samples, 25% detailing doctors, 12.5% ​​direct to user ads, 4% in hospitals detailing, and 2% in journal advertisements. In the United States, about $ 20 billion can be saved if generic is used instead of an equivalent brand product.
Although pharmaceutical companies have made substantial investments in marketing their products, overall promotion spending has declined over the past few years, and decreased 10 percent from 2009 to 2010. Pharmaceutical companies reduce most of the details and sampling, while spending in letters and print ads grew since last year.
Rules and fraud
European Union
In the European Union, drug marketing is regulated by the EU (formerly EEC) Directive 92/28/EEC. Among other things, member states are required to ban unlabeled marketing, and direct marketing to consumers of prescribed medicines.
United States
In the United States, the marketing and distribution of drugs is regulated by the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Laws and Marketing Regulations on Prescription Drugs, respectively. The regulation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that all prescription drugs be promoted to be true and not misleading, based on "substantial evidence or substantial clinical experience", to provide a "fair balance" between the risks and benefits of the promoted drug, and maintaining consistency with FDA-approved labeling. The FDA Office of Prescription Drug Promotion enforces this requirement.
In the 1990s, antipsychotics "are still seen as the treatment for the most serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia hallucinations, and rearrange them for wider use". Drugs like Abilify and Geodon are given to various patients, from preschoolers to eight-month-old children. In 2010, more than half a million young people took antipsychotic medication, and a quarter of nursing home residents have used it. But the government warned that the drugs could be fatal for some older patients and have unknown effects on children.
Any big company that sells drugs - Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & amp; Johnson - has resolved recent government cases, under the False Claim Act, for hundreds of millions of dollars or is currently under investigation for possible health care scams. After allegations of illegal marketing, two of the settlements in 2009 set the record for the largest criminal penalty ever imposed on the company. One involves Zyprexa antipsychotic Eli Lilly, and the other involves Bextra. In the Bextra case, the government also accused Pfizer of illegally marketing another antipsychotic, Geodon; Pfizer completed the claim portion of $ 301 million, without acknowledging any errors.
The following is a list of the four largest settlements achieved with pharmaceutical companies from 1991 to 2012, ratings ordered by the total size of the settlement. Legal claims against the pharmaceutical industry have varied considerably over the last two decades, including Medicare and Medicaid fraud, off-label promotion, and inadequate manufacturing practices.
The evolution of marketing
The emergence of new media and technology in recent years is rapidly changing the landscape of pharmaceutical marketing in the United States. Both physicians and users increase their reliance on the internet as a source of health and medical information, encouraging pharmaceutical marketers to view digital channels for opportunities to reach their target audience.
In 2008, 84% of US physicians used the Internet and other technologies to access pharmacy, biotech or medical device information - an increase of 20% over 2004. At the same time, salespeople find it harder to get time with doctors for individual details. Pharmaceutical companies are exploring online marketing as an alternative way to reach doctors. Emerging e-promotion activities include details of live video, online events, electronic sampling, and doctor's customer service portals such as PV Update, MDLinx, Aptus Health (former Interactive Doctors), and Epocrates.
Direct marketers to users also recognize the need to switch to digital channels as the audience becomes more fragmented and the number of access points for news, entertainment and information multiplies. Standard TV advertising, radio and print ads (DTC) are less relevant than ever before, and companies are beginning to focus more on digital marketing efforts such as product websites, online display advertising, search engine marketing, social media campaigns, place-based media and mobile ads to reach over 145 million US online adults for health information.
In 2010, the FDA's Marketing, Advertising and Communications Drug Division issued a warning letter about two unbranded consumer target websites sponsored by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation because the website promotes drugs for unapproved uses, the website fails to disclose related risks with the use of drugs and making unfounded dose claims.
See also
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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