Tag Archives: behavioral

A New Pharma Marketing Combo Places Patients At The Center Of Business

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As discussed in several of my previous articles, most pharma players need to walk the talk on ‘patient-centricity’, coming out of prevailing high decibel lip-service. This is not an easy task, and far from being every company’s cup of tea.

Effective implementation of patient-centricity by an organization, entails understanding of behavioral science by today’s pharma marketers. Many of them, I am sure, have already studied it in Business Schools. Be that as it may, by harnessing this scientific knowledge, the insights that they will acquire on primary and secondary pharma customers, will be unique. The important cues that will come out of the insights, will help them create well- targeted strategic marketing game plans having a cutting-edge. When implemented on an ongoing basis, this will help catalyze a win-win business environment, for reaping a rich harvest over a long period of time.

In today’s article, I shall dwell on the increasing relevance of an interesting combo of behavioral science – predictive analytics and patient-centricity, for a sustainable business performance. This is especially for the millennial pharma marketers to try and implement. With blessings from the top management, this model will help them jettison – the increasingly counterproductive – ‘gratification model’ of pharma business, imbibing ‘patient-centric ones’ – that patients themselves can feel and will appreciate.

The basic requirements to make it happen:

The basic requirements of the pharma companies to make it happen is to gradually move away from its core strategy of ‘buying prescriptions’ that often happens through contentious means. No doubt, it has the power to create a temporary strong brand push. But is definitely not sustainable, as these usually go against patients’ health and economic interest.

For a sustainable demand for a pharma brand, pharma companies would need to design a strong ‘brand pull’ in the new paradigm. This would prompt drug companies acquiring deep insights on how to leave a cherishing treatment experience with the patients for the brand. This would, consequently, have a strong-positive rub-off effect on the corporate image, as well. Likewise, a doctor would also like to know, how to create similar patient-experience with his treatment, to draw more of them in the future. This is diametrically opposite to generation of demand for a brand through ‘payment to doctors for prescriptions.’

Pharma marketer’s understanding of behavioral science is necessary:

This is because, it helps to get targeted deep-stick studies done on the way pharma customers, such as doctors and patients, behave. The span of the behavioral study should commence from the onset of a patient’s search for a disease treatment process, right up to when the individual gets an ‘after treatment experience’ – good, bad or average. It is, therefore, necessary for a drug company, to become more patient-centric, rather than self-serving, for achieving the desired goals of pharma business, consistently.

This wisdom would enable pharma marketers developing the following five broad insights for being ‘patient-centric’:

  • Understanding the process of thinking of a type or a group of patients about making their treatment choices. It could often mean not going for any treatment at all, or not adhering to prescribed treatment.
  • What makes patients behave the way they do, while undergoing a treatment?
  • Understanding both mental and physical feelings of patients while suffering from certain disease conditions, for effective engagement with them.
  • What type of holistic treatment experience the patients would value most to cherish.
  • What type of treatment experience the doctors would value most to provide to patients to enhance their practice and professional reputation.

While doing so, pharma marketers would need to clearly harmonize the two areas – one pertaining to doctors, and the other involving patients. This is important for the purpose of a clear focus on a comprehensive brand strategy formulation, based on well-analyzed data.

The key point to note, however – a creative blend of behavioral science with new-age pharma marketing tools can bring a sea change in the business performance of a company, along with providing a delightful treatment experience to patients with its drugs.

Generation of a huge pool of customer behavioral data is the starting point:

The first step of making a patient-centric organization is the generation of a huge pool of data on customer-behavior dynamics. That said, making predictions on the company’s customer behavior for future outcomes of the brand performance, from this data pool, would involve the use data analytics, which for this purpose will be ‘predictive data analytics.’

The use of ‘predictive analytics’ in pharma marketing:

In my article titled, ‘Data: The New Magic Wand For Pharma Business Excellence’, published in this Blog on October 01, 2018, I discussed the importance of well targeted data-based decision-making process, across the pharma functional areas. Taking this idea forward, let me explain here the critical role that ‘predictive data analytics’ can play in acquiring insights of the trend of behavior of the customers, especially patients and doctors.

Simply put, ‘predictive analytics’ is a type of advanced analytics, which are used to get deep insights and making well-informed predictions, based on both past and current data feeds. In pharma, especially for the subject that I am discussing, it pertains to insights on doctor and patient behavior related predictions, encompassing the entire span of a disease treatment process. Skillfully executed, this will strengthen, at least, two critical success factors in the pharma business:

  • Acquiring predictable insights on the targeted customers’ behavioral trend and pattern any given time-frame.
  • With such customer insights making the organization ‘patient-centric’ for more effective engagement with its customers.

Combining the above two points, I can well say, by analyzing a huge pool of data from behavioral-science-based information – ‘predictive analytics’ helps acquire deep insights on predictable customer behavior, with high precision. These are so useful, not just for better engagement with doctors, patients and other stakeholders, but also in making the organization patient-centric, in true sense. Nevertheless, many still question - Is ‘patients centricity’ really feasible in the pharma industry?

Is ‘patient centricity’ really feasible in the pharma industry?

This question was also raised in the 2017 paper titled, “Patient Centricity and Pharmaceutical Companies: Is It Feasible?” -  published in Vol. 51(4) of the Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science (TIRS). The paper captures patient-centricity as integrated measures for listening to and partnering with patients, and placing patients’ well-being at the core of all business initiatives. It represents a holistic approach to the disease management process.

The concept brand-oriented patient-centricity is not too difficult to understand. But, I reckon, the difficulty lies somewhere else. It is to fathom where and how a pharma player can predictably add differentiating value, for those patients who need a right kind of treatment. That’s why, the question of feasibility of ‘patient-centricity’ is being raised.

There is no doubt that such an effort presupposes considerable insights on patients’ behavior, alongside the requisite expertise to predict these, for different time-frames, with a great degree of precision. This not an insurmountable task, either, particularly in today’s paradigm – with state-of-the-art ‘predictive data analytic’ tools. This prompts me to believe, it is very much possible to make a truly patient centric organization, assuming that there will exist a strong will to survive in the business and prosper!

Are ‘predictive data analytics’ different from other analytics?

Yes, the following two key points make ‘predictive data analytics’ quite different from other data analytics:

  • General data analytics usually help acquire insights on the past and present.
  • Whereas, predictive data analytics help looking at near-mid and long-term future, regarding most probable customer behavior pattern and trend, with great accuracy.

Currently, with the ability to generate relevant and real-time big data pool, together with application of machine learning, data-mining and statistical modelling – predictive analytics have the power to help acquire future insights. This insight is totally data-based, sans any gut-feel. Thus, effective use of this process can enable pharma players effectively predict trends and behaviors of doctors and patients for meaningful engagement with them for their chosen brands.

Has potential to create a win-win outcome: 

To ensure a game-changing payback from this process, crafty dovetailing of the following three steps, complementing each other is critical:

  • Generate a huge pool of real-time data on doctors’ and patients’ behavior pattern, for a pre-selected time-frame.
  • With the knowledge of behavioral science, help analyze them with predictive analytics.
  • Understand from the results, the trend of behavioral dynamics of selected customers from the brand perspective.
  • Frame rewarding business strategies to create a win-win situation, involving both – the pharma players and the patients.

Some pharma players are on the ball:

One of the key reasons for imbibing patient-centricity, is the proliferation of ‘me-too’ types of brands – both patented and generics. It has started happening even in the market of high-priced oncology medicines, with not much difference in price between them.

In this situation, predictive data analytic tools can help understand multi-variable relationship between patient’s needs, their interaction with physicians, the oncologist’s prescriptions to them, type of physician-engagement of drug companies and patients’ experience before, during and after the treatment. This is not an easy task, nor all pharma companies have wherewithal of doing this, to gain brand market share, significantly.

With predictive data analytics, many pharma companies are keeping eyes on the ball, using it in different business areas, such as drug discovery. But not many of them, are using this combo-approach to make a patient-centric pharma organization. It is just a matter of time, I reckon, that global pharma will decide to move in this direction – fortified with deep pockets, but with a battered reputation, and facing a hostile pricing environment, across the world.    

Conclusion:

Customer insights, acquired through the crafty application of behavioral science, have immense potential to make sales and marketing decisions more informed, than what it is today. In tandem, it will help create a ‘worth remembering’ treatment experience for the patients with the brand used.

From this perspective, I reckon, skillful application of behavioral science to generate a huge pool of data, and their analysis with ‘predictive analytics’ will go a long way to create a truly ‘patient-centric’ organization.

When executed by a well-integrated expert team of market research, medical affairs and pharma marketing professionals, this new marketing-combo-approach has the potential to fetch a game-changing performance outcome, placing patients at the center of business. The net gain to the organization will be much more than the sum total of what each of these steps can ensue individually – remarkably enhancing corporate reputation, in tandem.

By: Tapan J. Ray     

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Pharma To Facilitate Self-Managing Chronic Diseases For Better Outcomes?

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“India’s burden of non-communicable disease (NCD) is escalating, but still the country does not have sufficiently detailed data on NCDs for research and policy purposes.” This was captured in a recent study, titled “India’s escalating burden of non-communicable diseases,” published in The Lancet Global Health on October 03, 2018. Thus, many experts are pondering, how to contain this menace and lower the disease burden of NCDs, in this situation. One of the ways to address this issue is exploring some unconventional ways.

As several studies have established, improving ‘self-management’ of chronic diseases by patients, after proper diagnosis and a treatment plan being in place, is one of the pillars to lower the disease burden. One such study is titled, ‘Patients’ knowledge of their chronic disease,’ appeared on June 2013 – Vol 42 (6) issue in the journal of afp – Australian Family Physician. The paper highlights that effective tools, policies and other measures to help self-management, would facilitate the process. These arecritical not just for better outcomes, but also to reduce the overall treatment cost.

In a similar context, another recent article, titled ‘Why Apps for Managing Chronic Disease Haven’t Been Widely Used, and How to Fix It,’ published in The Harvard Business Review (HBR) on April 04, 2018 made an interesting observation. The authors wondered: “In an era where nearly, every consumer good and service — from books and groceries to babysitting and shared rides — can be purchased through an electronic transaction on a mobile device, it seems reasonable to think that more and more of our health care can also be managed using apps on mobile devices.”

This article will dwell in this area, based on several interesting and credible research findings. Nevertheless, to give a proper perspective, I shall start with a brief outline on the incidence of chronic diseases in India.

Increasing incidence of chronic diseases in India:

There are several recent reports confirming the ascending trend of non-infectious chronic diseases in India, two of which are as follows:

The National Health profile 2018, published by the Ministry of Health also records that between 1990 and 2016 the disease burden due to:

  • Communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases, as measured using Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), dropped from 61 per cent to 33 per cent.
  • Noncommunicable diseases increased from 30 per cent to 55 per cent.
  • The epidemiological transition varies widely among Indian states: 48 percent to 75 percent for non-communicable diseases, 14 percent to 43 percent related to infectious and associated diseases; and 9 percent to 14 percent associated with injuries.

Alongside, the above article of The Lancet Global Health also underscores the following takeaways from its comprehensive analyses of NCDs in the Indian situation:

  • The three leading causes of mortality—cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and diabetes.
  • In absolute terms, these three diseases together kill around 4 million Indians annually (as in 2016).
  • Most of these deaths are premature, occurring among Indians aged 30–70 years, representing some of the world’s largest health losses, with enormous policy ramifications.
  • India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is making efforts to establish policies and intervention strategies for prevention and control NCDs. For example, the National Program for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke, launched in 2010, and the National Program for Health Care of Elderly, launched in 2010–11, the article noted.

As none of the measures taken so far could create an appreciable impact, India needs to come up with a major intervention to tackle this escalating health issue, the article concluded. In my view, optimal use of modern technology in the self-management of such virtually lifelong diseases, can be a great enabler for patients to bring down the disease treatment and management cost, significantly. Let me hasten to add again, the question of self-management comes only after a proper medical diagnosis and a prescribed treatment plan for the same being in place.

The key benefits of self-management and the unmet need:

The key benefits of effective self-management of chronic diseases are many. However, the following four clearly stands out:

  • Improves Patients’ quality of life significantly.
  • Arrests progression of the ailment – containing associated disease related complications.
  • Substantially reduces the interval and number of follow-up visits with doctors.
  • Thus, reduces the disease burden appreciably.

Curiously, most traditional pharma companies are yet to take any major step to address, at least, the above four critical areas. They don’t seem to go beyond the conventional methods of disease related advices. Whereas, the crucial need to fetch a behavioral change in patients for participative self-management of NCDs, keeps lingering.

A number of research studies have also confirmed that ‘mobile health applications are promising tools for improving outcomes in patients suffering from various chronic conditions.’ One of these studies titled, ‘Smartphone app in self-management of chronic low back pain: a randomized controlled trial’, was published in the November 27, 2018 issue of the European Spine Journal.

Sensing an unmet need in this area, besides a large number of brilliant tech startups, many large and pure technology companies, such as Apple and Google have already entered this fray.

 A recent example:

Let me cite a recent example to drive home the above point. On December 12, 2018, CNBC featured an article carrying the headline ‘Apple now has dozens of doctors on staff, showing it’s serious about health tech.’ Some of the key points of this article are as follows:

  • The number of doctors on staff is an indication that Apple is serious about helping customers manage diseases, and not just wellness or fitness.
  • Doctors can also help Apple guide the medical community on how to use Apple’s new health technologies and to deflect criticism and also to win approval among doctors who fear liability and are already overburdened by technology.
  • Many of these doctors are also still continuing to see patients. That might also give Apple an edge by emphasizing the patient experience.

This example demonstrates how detail are the plans of these tech companies for gaining a firm foothold in the healthcare space.

‘Effectiveness’ and ‘future scope’ of self-management of diseases:

The article titled, ‘Self-Management: A Comprehensive Approach to Management of Chronic Conditions,’ featured in the August 2014 edition of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) reiterated some important points. It established the relevance, future scope and effectiveness of self-management of chronic diseases, as follows:

  • As chronic conditions emerge as a major public health concern, self-management will continue to grow as a crucial approach to managing these conditions, preventing illness and promoting wellness.
  • Chronic disease conditions are generally slow in their progression and long in their duration. Thus, self-management can offer those living with these conditions, a means to maintain or even improve their capacity to live well, over the course of their lives.
  • Self-management intervention programs that address specific diseases are showing success across multiple chronic conditions.
  • These programs have particular value that represents an amalgamation of the goals of the patient, family, community, and the clinician with everyone working in partnership to best manage the individual’s illness while facilitating comprehensive care.
  • Self-management reaches beyond traditional illness management by incorporating the larger concept of prevention by emphasizing the notion that those who are chronically ill still have a need for preventive interventions to promote wellness and mitigate the further deterioration of health.
  • If one considers the nature of self-management in all its elements and practical characteristics, it is not only a logical approach to health and health care, but also an optimal way to address chronic conditions as a major issue in public health.

Inducing a behavioral change in chronic disorders with health apps:

For effective self-management of chronic diseases, there is a need to neutralize the negative influence of the individual’s behavioral traits. Research studies have also established that behavior-change-focused interventions play an important role in this effort.

However, not all patients take adequate care for such changes to take place. While the treating doctor may play an important role of a coach in this area, in reality, they usually don’t find enough time to spend on each patient with NCDs. The McKinsey & Company’s publication titled, ‘Changing patient behavior: the next frontier in health care value,’ also reiterates that to address the rising cost of chronic conditions, health systems must find effective ways to get people to adopt healthier behaviors.

As I mentioned before, this space has attracted active interest of many tech players in business expansion. More evidence-based health apps are being introduced to help drive patient-behavior change for effective self-management of chronic diseases. There are reported surveys on weight management aided by health apps, where ‘ninety-six percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that using a diet or nutrition app helped drive positive behavior change and healthy eating habits.’

In my article, titled ‘Prescription Digital Therapy Now A Reality,’ published in this blog on May 07, 2018, I mentioned that in September 2017, the first USFDA-cleared mobile app has been made available to patients. The app has both safety and efficacy label to help treat patients with ‘Substance Use Disorder’. Studies have established that it is two-times more effective than conventional in person therapy sessions.

More recently, in September 2018, Apple’s smart-watch version 4 included a US-FDA cleared electrocardiogram (ECG), officially classifying it as a medical device capable of alerting its user to abnormal heart rhythms. In the same context, US-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., said that digital advances, creating a new technological paradigm of health tools and health apps., are empowering consumers to take better informed decisions on their medical care and healthy living.

Conclusion:

It has been well-demonstrated by research studies that evidence-based health-apps for self-managing chronic diseases improve outcomes, remarkably. Consequently, this has triggered some critical activities by purely tech companies in the health care space, even in India. The primary driver being a strong consideration of this segment as an opportunity area to meet an unmet need, where most pharma players don’t seem to be doing enough, as on date.

Before it gets too late, there appears a need to take a serious note of this shifting paradigm. The awareness of which should then play a critical role in developing marketing strategies for brands used in NCDs. Otherwise, non-pharma tech companies will eventually dominate this segment, armed with a different genre of technological prowess that they possess.

The article titled, “Evidence-Based mHealth Chronic Disease Mobile App Intervention Design: Development of a Framework,” published inJan-Mar 2016 edition of the Journal of JPMIR Research Protocols, epitomizes it succinctly:

“Mobile health technology creates a shift in the paradigm of chronic disease management. It offers new possibilities to engage patients in self-management of their chronic diseases in ways that did not exist in the past. To maximize the potential of mHealth requires the integration of research and expertise from multiple disciplines including clinical, behavioral, data analytics, and technology to achieve patient engagement and health outcomes. This paradigm shift also triggers a need for new approaches to designing clinical and behavioral support for chronic disease management that can be implemented through existing health care services and programs.”

These developments send a strong signal for pharma to facilitate self-managing chronic diseases, soon enough, for better patient outcomes and, in tandem, creating a win-win situation for both.

By: Tapan J. Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

 

 

Trees Die From The Top: Apt For Pharma Leadership Too?

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The Management Guru of all-time – Peter F. Drucker once said: “The spirit of an organization is created from the top… If an organization is great in spirit, it is because the spirit of its top people is great.” As “Trees die from the top”, no one should ever become a strategist unless he or she is willing to have his or her character serve as a model for subordinates – Drucker emphasized.

Decades after this assertion from Drucker, meant for management practitioners, it is discernible even today how irrefutable these axioms are.  In the contemporary times, as well, particularly when reality bites a company hard, being caught on the wrong side of ‘generally acceptable’ ethics, value and compliance standards.

While zeroing in to pharma, soundbites usually generated at that time, especially from the top echelon of the management, seem to hint that employees down the rung are responsible for such misdeeds, besides, of course, the legacy factor.

At this moment of truth, it is also not unusual for them to romancing the utopia, as it were. Senior management comes out with several ideas, which are squeaky clean in terms of optics. Some of them also talk about introducing behavior metric on ethics and values in employee performance appraisal before releasing any performance related pay out. In this article, I shall focus on this leadership issue in view of some latest developments in this area.

The latest developments:  

Let me now come straight to the latest developments in this area, as I see around.

“Novartis links bonuses to ethics in bid to rebuild reputation” – was a headline of Reuters on September 18, 2018. It reported: “Swiss drug maker Novartis has revealed its employees only get a bonus if they meet or exceed expectations for ethical behavior as it seeks to address past shortcomings that have damaged its reputation.”

Some interesting points stand out from this report on the ownership of such alleged malpractices. These reconfirm that the reasons for the same, including the repeated allegations of such nature, are being passed on to others by the top management. For example:

  • To past practices or the legacy factor, even if the current CEO has been a part of that corporate environment, since long.
  • To employees responsible down the line, and a new system is being adopted to address the issue.

In this case, as Reuters reports: “Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan has made strengthening the Swiss drug maker’s ethics culture a priority after costly bribery scandals or legal settlements in South Korea, China and the United States.”

Interestingly, as reported by the media, “the company was also this year embroiled in a political controversy over payments it made to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ex-attorney.”  Previously, even in the clinical trial area, Japanese authorities, reportedly “uncovered serious misconduct during a trial of its leukemia drug, Tasigna.”

As I said above, in response to such incidents, the General Counsel of Novartis, reportedly expressed: “This allows us to look at the behavior metric before any money leaves Novartis and catch potential misconduct before there is any risk to our reputation.” The official further added, “You can expect us to continue focusing on resolving the legacy issues that we read about in the press, ensuring we address any remaining underlying behaviors.”

Such steps not taken for the first time by a pharma company: 

EvenGlaxoSmithKline tried something akin in the past.

“GSK scraps sales rep targets after scandal,” was the headline of December 17, 2013 edition of the Financial Times. It reported: “GlaxoSmithKline is to scrap individual sales targets for its commercial staff as it seeks to repair its image and reform working practices in the wake of allegations in China that its staff paid officials up to $500m in bribes. The move comes amid concerns over aggressive marketing across the pharmaceutical industry and follows a series of damaging regulatory probes leading to a record $ 3bn fine in the US last year.”

However, later on GlaxoSmithKline, reportedly “altered the plan when its sales began to suffer in the world’s largest market.”

Where is the real issue lying?

As“PwC‘s 21st CEO Survey: Preparing for disruption” found, 71 percent of CEOs surveyed said that their organizations face greater pressure to deliver business results in less time.

There isn’t an iota of doubt, I reckon, that pharma CEOs are under constant performance pressure from the investors and other stakeholders to deliver expected financial results. This makes them keep their eyes primarily glued on to the grindstone for churning out expected profits from the business. This also means that they expect management efforts to be generally directed to deliver ‘values’ at the least possible cost.

On the other hand, the same PwC survey findings reiterated that with rising drug costs, the demand for the drug companies to demonstrate the treatment efficacy, is increasing by manifold. Thus, “to remain competitive, Big Pharma will have to do things faster (like drug development) and cheaper for the patient, add more value for the same money, and become more proactive partners with patients and doctors in both wellness and cure” - one of the findings of this study emphasized.

It is quite common for most large to medium sized pharma companies to have in place a well-articulated organizational ‘ethics, compliance and values’, together with requisite checks and balances in the form of rigorous rules, regulations and other guidelines.

Most often these adorn the respective websites too, for public knowledge. The question, therefore, surfaces what could then possibly go wrong in the organization and where exactly does the real issue lie, while effectively managing the organizational growth?

“Non-compliance – A serious challenge to growth”: 

Serious malpractices and their related fallout in pharma business – not just in marketing, but clinical trials, manufacturing, quality assurance and other areas, are not usually due to any lack of requisite processes or expertise. These are generally serious consequences of non-compliance of various organizational norms. At times, with the indirect support of senior management, or senior management keeps their eyes closed on such non-compliances, under demanding obligation for delivering expected financial results and business growth.

Tweaking areas, such as employee performance-incentive norms, as happened in the cases of GSK or Novartis, can’t fetch a long-lasting solution in such a situation, as I see it. Nonetheless, the survey report findings of Deloitte, titled “Non-compliance – A serious challenge to growth,” are interesting to get a sense of the reasons behind the same.

Key reasons for non-compliance: 

The Deloitte report identifies some key contributors to malpractices and non-compliance in the pharma sector, indicating the percentage of survey respondents involved against each, as follows:

  • Lack of an efficient internal control/ compliance system:  61 percent
  • Weak regulatory enforcement / action taken against fraudsters:  55 percent
  • Inadequate utilization of technology tools available to identify red flags:  45 percent
  • Lack of a zero-tolerance approach towards malpractice and regulatory non-compliance:  45 percent
  • Inadequate due diligence on employees/ third party associates:  36 percent
  • Unrealistic targets/goals linked to monetary compensations:  33 percent
  • Senior management override of controls:  24 percent
  • Inadequate oversight by the Board/ Audit Committee:  06 percent

As I mentioned before, most key contributors to malpractice and non-compliance point towards a lack of senior management efficiency in internal controls, systems, and “inadequate utilization of technology tools available to identify red flags.” Curiously, no one mentions about the requirements for any fresh measures or systems to curb such incidents, in the future.

Just tweaking the present system may not help:

Just for changing the optics, tweaking the present system often doesn’t help. Many similar instances in the past, such as GSK’s example, as cited above, would vindicate this point. In the GSK case, at least, it’s the then CEO – Sir Andrew Witty expectedly realized that ‘unrealistic targets/goals linked to monetary compensations’ lead to such corruptions.

But total delinking of the core responsibility of any sales staff, namely ‘generation of top-level numbers both in volume and value’, with performance incentive, could throw some future challenges. Similar reason, presumably prompted GSK altering the plan when its sales began to suffer, at a later date.

Similarly, Novartis is, reportedly introducing a new behavioral metric as qualifying criteria for its employees to earn bonuses or incentives. Intriguingly, despite the existence of rigorous rules, regulations, guidelines and associated punitive provisions for not complying with the company ethics and values for a long-time, malpractices are still being reported today.

Thus, I wonder, how will an additional system of similar nature prevent recurrence of such incidents in the future? Anyway, only the future will tell whether a tweaking of this nature in the present system that did not work in the past, will work in this particular case effectively.

Conclusion:

The reasons for less than adequate internal controls of an organization, I reckon, fall squarely on the senior management, especially for repeat offences. Passing the blame to employees down the line or tweaking their performance appraisal system by introducing a ‘behavioral metric’, is likely to be short term, finger-pointing on the legacy factor notwithstanding.

On the contrary, these may likely to be construed as manifestations of knee-jerk reactions, and not so well-thought-out strategic measures. Neither do such repeated malpractices demonstrate a great spirit of the organization, nor do these evince astute leadership qualities of its top management.

Coming back to where I started from, quoting what the management guru Peter Drucker once said: “The spirit of an organization is created from the top… If an organization is great in spirit, it is because the spirit of its top people is great.” He also reiterated, no one should ever become a strategist unless he or she is willing to have his or her character serve as a model for subordinates This is certainly not the situation for those pharma players mired with alleged malpractices, repeatedly – not just in marketing, but in other operational areas too.

As the good old saying goes: “trees die from the top,” so is also an organization when its senior management lacks a moral compass on ethics, compliance and values. Considering what is being often reported on business malpractices within the drug industry, isn’t the saying equally apt for pharma leadership, as well?

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.