The Beyond Branding Blog

Is Global Pharma and the healthcare of the world's people sustainable if we keep on compounding misunderstandings of the sort we've seen globally branded in recent times?

Emotional Intelligence

case 1 - open source permission asserted with European Union's knowledgeboard

Consider global pharma sector- can our community make global brand & media knowledge explicit on the triangles of the recent cox 2 analgesic debacle?

Triangle 1 (left): owners, customers, employees. A most profitable innovation of many in this sector in recent years is to spend billion dollars of advertising to addict people in chronic pain (reheumatism) to more expensive branded analgesics of the cox 2 kind. Published evidence: for vast majority who demanded these products- there was no benefit over traditional analgesics, which are now mainly generic and cheap. Moreover the drug companies either did not monitor or did not publish that these drugs particularly, Merck's Vioxx, raised heart pressure so that over years (because chronic means you need continuous treatment) an estimated 50000+ (and this may be just the american number ) of death by heart attacks happened.

In triangle 1, owners abuse customers -using imagery to addict to something they mostly didnt need. Putting presure on employees to make this heavy sale.

In triangle 2 (middle) , see these companies putting pressure on medical professions around the world (ask your doctor why you're not on these) and national drug licensing authorities apparently more concerned with the economic success of this sector than the people. See huge healthcare spends going on these fancy drugs that had worse side-effects than generics, instead of spending society's money on relevant heathcare.

On triangle 3 (right) see management of global pharma behaving in a command and control way which precluded them learning from patients K1 or from medical professions and societies. Now ask whether we the people (K1) and governments representing us (K5) will collectively stand up to global pharma companies and negotiate the right sort of future change. Else, won't the system do an addictive marketing repeat in a few years in another category?

3 sorts of futures: (two not in public's interest to compound):
1) endless lawyer suits through which lawyers will be main gainers, but so prolonged & learning buried that none of the global pharma companies change their ways

2) similar to 1 but all will turn on Merck owner of vioxx as the worst heart pressure increaser; this company will essentially go bankrupt; whilst others revert to business as usual

3) the better way: why not leaders of G8 get the CEOs of pharma around the table; and negotiate instead of bankrupting one or more pharma conpanies that they put all these triangles right for the future: let's re=systemise around competences which lead focus of drug innovation to making people healthier, and sort out some of the world's most pressing healthcare problems. It isnt just the phrma companies that are not sustainble- its the whole system of flows around these triangles and what km spins.

Maake sense to you? Or how do you see pharma's future and the health of 6 billion beings compounding?

posted by ..., 9:24 AM permalink