Pharmaceutical Executive-07-01-2006

Jeffrey Kindler holds two blue, diamond-shaped pills in the palm of his hand. One is authentic Viagra, manufactured by Pfizer. The other is counterfeit, maybe bought by an undercover Pfizer investigator, or intercepted when smugglers crossed a border, or perhaps seized in a raid on an illegal Chinese factory. Kindler challenges visitors and fellow employees to tell the difference between the two pills. Neither looks in any obvious way "fake," and no one among the journalists, corporate communications employees, or even security specialists gathered in Pfizer's global security operations center cares to hazard a guess.

Figuring out the right drug for each manifestation of the disease is going to be critical. Because then patients know they're getting something that works.

I needed to eat. I even wanted to eat. Instead, I sat in front of my hospital lunch tray, unable to face up to a carton of red Jell-O. When you think of it, that's a situation most of us face (minus the Jell-O) every day in business.

Pharma companies fear CMS' new Medicare policy will routinely require post-approval studies in order to gain reimbursement for new drugs. CMS says it is expanding payment for "promising but not persuasive" drugs.

There's a school of thought that only the market leader should do the unbranded campaign. I don't subscribe to that.

Electronic data capture (EDC) is an emerging paradigm for gathering information in clinical trials. Ask anyone who has sorted through stacks of accumulated paper at the end of a study, and they'll say EDC is the wave of the future. But while many companies are on board with the technological benefits, enthusiasm wanes when it comes to actual implementation. Even some of EDC's biggest champions admit to its obstacles: "It's a disruptive technology that doesn't give immediate returns," says James Tiede, vice president of integrated data services, global clinical operations at Johnson & Johnson.

Whether you're gay or straight, or African-American, white or Hispanic, we knew that we have an audience that is very diverse and experiences the disease in very different ways. Telling the stories in serial format was best.

At first glance, you might think Bob Miglani comes from a pharma family. He and both of his younger sisters began their careers as sales reps after college. But behind their success in big business lie formative experiences at the Dairy Queen stores owned by their uncle and parents, who are immigrants from India. Even today, Miglani, whose fulltime job is in Pfizer's public affairs department, spends some weekends serving cones at the family business. In his new book, Treat Your Customers: Thirty Lessons on Service and Sales That I Learned at My Family's Dairy Queen Store (Hyperion, 2006), Miglani, 36, shares the core values that work in small business and corporate America.

RFID is not ready for prime time anywhere. Certainly not in the US. There is no way RFID gives you end-to-end control of the product.

California has proposed legislation for a pilot program to reinforce access to treatment for mentally ill offenders. This is a step in the right direction, but it should be the subject of national policy, not a localized effort.