Category Archives: Industry Trends and Topics

How Elite Medical Affairs Teams Help Drive a Successful Pharma Product Launch

A highly regulated marketplace, coupled with intensifying competition, have pushed the Medical Affairs function into a significant launch role that extends from the pre-launch phases to well beyond market entry. Best-in-class Medical Affairs groups can become a kind of conduit

5 Important Trends Shaping Pharma Business in 2016

In a sector as fast-changing as biopharmaceuticals, it’s important to look beyond today’s hot topics to identify the long-term factors which are really driving change in the industry. From a list that could include a hundred headline-grabbing trends, we’ve pinned

Google Life Sciences Making Strides to Get Under Our Skin (for Good Reasons)

Six months ago, I wrote a blog about how Google and Apple were pushing into the healthcare industry with their innovative apps – Google’s and Alcon Labs’ “smart” contact lens and Apple’s foray into new health apps that track everything

The First 3 Commandments of Internal Branding

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In the last blog post, I promised to bring greater detail to how pharma companies should brand a product internally before reaching out to the public. The first three “commandments” generally occur during Phase II of a planned drug launch, and provide

The First 100 Days: Ensuring Successful Mergers & Acquisitions

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It seems like every week that there is an announcement of a new merger or some company in the pharmaceutical or technology industry looking to acquire another company. When these announcements come down, a lot of angst occurs for front-line staff

Google & Apple Announce New Health Care Innovations

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When Google and Novartis business unit Alcon announced recently that they would partner to bring a “smart” contact lens to the market, it put an exclamation mark on the next wave in health care innovation. Earlier this year, Apple announced its

Mastering Brand Leadership To Reap Product Success

Last week’s post by Cameron Tew, “Why Great Brand Managers are Even Better Leaders,” was about how the best brand team leaders can elicit loyalty and focus from members who come to the product team from various functional teams. Ultimately,

Effectively & Efficiently Serving Thought Leaders

As this slide shows, Medical Affairs, Clinical Affairs and Marketing all have a hand in the management of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). Unfortunately, these functions are seldom bridged by processes, personnel or systems. When such work silos are created, you can be

Why Great Brand Managers are Even Better Leaders

Companies frequently search for ways to gauge success and often come up with practical measures to decide whether a product is a boon or a bust. Executives often believe that by setting measurable goals that brand teams can create a

Current Practices & Trends in Physician E-Sampling Programs

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Pharmaceutical companies are often searching for new ways to supply patients and physicians with samples of their medications. One approach that has gained momentum in recent years is e-sampling—a program that enables physicians to order and manage prescription samples online

Exploring & Implementing Innovative Sales Training Technologies & Trends

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The training that reps—both new & experienced—receive from pharmaceutical sales training programs plays a key role in their overall effectiveness. Despite this, organizations are finding it more and more challenging to deliver exceptional services within their sales functions. As technologies

Where Should Pharma Innovate to Stay Ahead of the Competition?

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With new technologies accelerating changes within the healthcare industry, resource-strapped leaders can find it increasingly difficult to stay ahead of the competition let alone innovate. On top of this, executives can suffer from short-sightedness, often only planning three to five

What is Innovation? : Promoting & Enabling Innovation in Customer Marketing

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Recently, bio-pharmaceutical leaders have been faced with various challenges that have forced them to become savvier, especially in the area of marketing innovations. In current news, Myriad Genetics, a molecular diagnostic company, is suing two competitors for offering similar genetic

Physicians & Patients Anxiously Await Results from Cholesterol-Reducing Drug Development Footrace

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The recent discovery of a rare gene mutation causing cholesterol levels not imagined previously has caused a three-way footrace between industry giants, Sanofi, Pfizer, and Amgen. The pharmaceutical companies are all in the process of developing drugs that mimic the