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1. Mayo Clinic The Mayo Clinic has long been an online resource for medical information, with a website that offers advice and expertise from more than 3,300 medical professionals for free, so it’s not at all surprising that the medical group has been successful in social media

Doctors were able to share and connect with readers and patients through a first-hand account of relief efforts performed after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Massachusetts General Hospital recognizes this, and did something amazing when researchers from the Emergency Department worked together to create an iPhone app designed to help users find the closest emergency room to their area anywhere in the U.S. The app was promoted using hospital social media outlets, creating a YouTube video that bloggers could embed in their stories, also providing for opportunities to tweet the video and share it on Facebook. With the help of social media, the hospital’s app was able to stand out in the sea of apps available for the iPhone.

The cleverness of CP+B’s “More Than Medication” campaign is 50% in the content that’s there, and 50% in the content that isn’t. Missing are the saccharine smiles, ridiculous athletic feats and idyllic dalliances of perfectly healthy people that never took the medication they’re purporting to be endorsing. Rather than portraying people who could be anyone (or, sadly, no one), these ads are the antithesis. “More Than Medication” is about life—mundane, radiant, lifechanging, heartbreaking. Through all of these milestones, Pfizer is attempting to build relationships one person at a time, and be a valuable presence in their healthy lives at their most important stages. Only time will tell if the campaign pays dividends, but as advertising strategy, it’s brilliant. Pharmaceutical companies rely on wholescale batch assembly at every stage of development, from searching for molecules as drug candidates, to researching them, to the mass production thereof. In fact, the fermentation tanks developed by Pfizer that enabled the first-ever mass production of penicillin during World War II became a national historic landmark in 2008. This doesn’t dictate that pharmaceutical ads must follow the same standard operating protocol.

Beyond “reinventing” pharmaceutical advertising, the “More Than Medication” campaign taps into an important (and growing) wellness zeitgeist being embraced by the professional and private health care sectors. Within the last few years, emphasis has shifted significantly from medication to meditation, pills to pilates, and technology to tofu. Individual preventitive care, including eating habits, exercise, healthfulness beyond chemicals, and individual responsibility, has been gaining momentum as a critical component of modern medicine, nowhere more than in how it is advertised. Kaiser Permanente’s enormously successful and popular “Thrive” campaign, recently expanded to the tune of $53 million, has echoes the welness call to arms of Canada’s “More Than Medication” spots. Internal documents indicate that the 2004 campaign was launched to combat a declining membership of 150,000 in a similarly reviled industry (health insurance). The initially modest reach has since expanded to print, outdoors, television and radio.

Pfizer supplemented their television spots with an interactive website that offers resources for individuals and their families, including eating better, strengthening mind and body, practical life tips, and places to find help to achieve these goals. In doing do, the pharmaceutical behemoth rebrands themselves as in touch, personally connected on an individual level and convey that they care about their patients’ health even if it means never having to take one of their medications.

BIG R&D SPENDERS Company R&D Spend in Rs Crore Ranbaxy 331 Dr Reddys Labs 283 Sun Pharmaceutical 146 Wockhardt 94 Lupin 87 Cadila Healthcare 71 Torrent Pharmaceuticals 51 Biocon 27 Panacea Biotec 24  

GLOBAL BIOTECH R&D PRODUCTIVITY ON THE RISE The productivity of big pharma has been remarkable over the past 25 years. In each of the last 10 years, the pharmaceutical industry has ranked at the top of Fortune.s .most profitable. industry list. But this top ranking has eluded the industry in recent years, during which the productivity of the biotech sector. for many years poor in the aggregate.has strengthened markedly. An emerging distinction between biotech and big pharma is the productivity of R&D. According to Arthur D Levinson, chairman and CEO, Genentech, R&D spending by large pharmaceutical companies has been steadily increasing over time, while the number of new drug approvals (NDAs) coming out of these companies has been decreasing. In 2004, the pharmaceutical industry spent about $50 billion on R&D, compared to $16 billion spent on R&D by publicly traded US biotech companies, and an estimated $20 billion spent by the global biotech industry. In spite of its large R&D expenditures, big pharmas. NDAs have been declining steadily, while biotechs have accounted for an increasing share of NDAs over the past five years. In 2003, the biotech industry hit a milestone when it surpassed big pharma in the number of new drug approvals from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a given year. The trend continued to favor biotech in 2004. In 2005, an estimated 35 new pharmaceutical or biotechnology products with sales potential of at least $150 million each will enter the market. Of these, 20 are expected to be products from biotechnology companies, and will be marketed directly by these companies or in collaboration with pharmaceutical partners. In addition, there are more than 700 compounds from biotech firms at various stages of development, with more than 400 compounds in clinical trials. More than four out of five therapies currently in drug development are founded on biotech discoveries or employ biotech tools.                                                                                                       Source: Ernst & Young

Anne O’Riordan, Global Industry Managing Director of Accenture’s Life Sciences group, believes that this offers an engine for return to growth.Moody’s Credit Outlook agree and in response they have upgraded their outlook for the Pharmaceutical Sector from Negative to Stable, pointing out that “the multiyear wave of drug patent expirations that have squeezed profits should subside next year”.

Global pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline has been hugely successful at supporting a culture of innovation with smaller entrepreneurial units as well as developing strengths in the consumer health markets in the Middle East and Asia.

Bristol-Meyers Squibb has also developed a very specific strategy and targeted unmet clinical needs, such as biological dugs and oncology, as well as executed some creative deals with big pharma companies and implemented fundamental internal organisational changes.

he Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region is often cited as being one of Europe’s fastest growing economies.  The pharmaceutical sector has grown rapidly over the past decade, and ranks within the top 10 industrial sectors in CEE. Its position has also been strengthened by the recent accessions of many CEE countries to the EU. The CEE pharmaceutical market has attracted many foreign investors in recent years, due to the strong opportunities for growth that exist here

great opportunity as well as some challenges

What's more, "e-health" has become synonymous with government boondoggles. The country has spent $4 billion on the endeavour, but e-health initiatives in Ontario, B.C., N.B. and P.E.I. have all been accused of mishandling the awarding of contracts and having little to show for the amount of money invested.

Electronic medical records and other digital technologies have the potential to improve patient outcomes by helping hospitals identify and track infections, medication errors and other adverse events and alerting physicians to drug interactions and other problems.

"Most hospitals have implemented technology not to address these issues but to try to either create efficiencies or get better at billing, get better at coding," he said.

“AstraZeneca is the perfect example of a company which has shown all the signs of panic over the past five years,” said Rea. “The stress of an underwhelming pipeline has led it to make bad decisions on top of bad decisions, and although it enjoyed some top line growth by flogging its sales model, the same primary care sales model has led to poor decisions in many areas.”

This year there were two major factors which contributed to Johnson & Johnson’s number one ranking. It successfully brought to market Abiraterone (Zytiga) - a lyase and steroid synthesis inhibitor for use in the treatment of prostate cancer - and furthermore it was a major riser in the Access to Medicine Index, which is of increasing global importance.”

“Roche, which kept its number 3 spot on the Index, saw the first combined launch of a drug and companion diagnostic device, but on the negative side it had to close phase III development of dalcetrapib, a potentially $20bn product. “Sanofi, although rising one place to rank fifth, suffered a massive climbdown with Zaltrap in colorectal cancer launching at a suicidally high price which it continued to defend against increasing criticism. It eventually cut costs to 50 per cent but the damage had been done. “And AstraZeneca is the perfect example of a company which has shown all the signs of panic over the past five years. The stress of an underwhelming pipeline has led it to make bad decisions on top of bad decisions, and although it enjoyed some top line growth by flogging its sales model, the same primary care sales model has led to poor decisions in many areas.”

As the company’s business has been hit hard by the loss of patent protection for one of its key drugs, the high blood pressure treatment Diovan, and the financial pressures affecting healthcare systems worldwide, Novartis has begun to change the method it uses to price its medicines

I … started to shift our business away from a transactional model that was focused on physically selling the drugs to delivering an outcome-based approach to add value beyond just the pill,” said Jimenez in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I really believe that in the future, companies like Novartis are going to be paid on patient outcomes as opposed to selling the pill.”

PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY ANALYSIS Brazil has the 11th largest pharmaceutical market globally with annual sales topping US$17bn. Brazil launched a major 10-year biotechnology initiative in 2007 that provides incentives for private-sector R&D and production. There are some 550 pharmaceutical firms in Brazil. Of the top ten companies by sales in 2008, the first six are all foreign multinational drug makers. Sanofi-Aventis (US$1,229mn in sales) and Novartis (US$1,116mn) are clear leaders, followed by Roche (US$735mn), Pfizer (US$666mn) AstraZeneca (US$584mn) and Eli Lilly (US$545mn). Local firms Aché (US$456mn), EMS Sigma Pharma (US$445mn), Eurofarma (US$424mn) and Biosintética (US$382mn) fill the remaining spots. While this shows the strength of innovation for foreign drugmakers, the presence of five local firms highlights strong competition, as well as the growing use of generic drugs in Brazil. Other leading local producers include Aché/Biosintética, Medley and Libbs. From 2009-2014 BMI forecasts a CAGR of 11.63% for patented drug market in US dollar terms. The projected continuation of sales expansions is one of the key reasons that multinational research-based drugmakers continue to invest in Brazil despite generic competition having eroded some market potential since their inception in 2000. Industry association PróGenéricos has estimated that generics will account for 30% of the market by 2010. Investment reportedly totaled around US$400mn between 1999 and 2006, illustrating not only an expansion of capacity, but also the repositioning of product lines in favor of genuine generics. SOURCE: Business Monitor International

In fact, many patient groups referred to negative press to explain why they downgraded their opinion of some drugmakers, particularly concerning patient safety, transparency and corporate integrity. Drugmakers with a high exposure to ‘bad stories’ in 2012 saw their rankings drop, PatientView writes in its report. Others benefited as a result.

The Chinese government has officially amended its patent laws to allow drug companies to reproduce generic, low-cost versions of expensive

China is considering further strengthening its legal framework, so as to make use of legal space to produce generic drugs