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PMs find new ground for reinforcing marketing messages and targeting the media mix.

Everything you wanted to know from your customers and are ready to ask.

London-Government and industry have agreed there should be no weakening of patent protection in the effort to speed access to medicines in the developing world.

Grass never grew under her feet. She steadily rose to the top from the ranks of her industry. Now one of a handful of executive vice-presidents on the chairman's own management team, she co-directs the most important unit in the Pharmacia corporation, prescription pharmaceuticals, holding the title of president in that business.

Pharmaceutical executives should study their own scientists. They construct clever tools to explore convoluted phenomena. They are the true friends of complexity.

Planning fundamentals map the route to increased worldwide market share.

Build powerful brand identities that grab new customers and increase loyalty by taking a page from the experts.

To work well together, product managers and their R&D liaisons must understand each other}s needs, motives, terminology, and decision processes.

From courtship to marriage, agency selection dos and don}ts guide the way to a perfect match.

Now that the pharma sales rep market has reached its saturation point, companies must focus on retention.

Creative partnerships need realistic expectations and clear communication for successful product launch...and beyond.

Companies that fail to comply with regulatory guidelines make easy targets for investigators.

A new task force will examine European pharma}s competitiveness, innovation, and commitment to public health. The "G10" is not, as it may sound, an enlarged grouping of the world}s leading industrialized countries. It}s actually far more important than that.

Straddling the divide between drug discovery and drug delivery, Protarga doesn't fit neatly into any pharma category. It's not exactly a delivery technology company, because its products are patentable new entities that it plans to keep for itself. Nor is it purely biotech, because it works with chemical compounds. And in the end, president and CEO Nigel Webb expects Protarga to become a fully integrated pharma company-but only in the virtual sense.

Companies Face Costly System Overhauls With New FDA Regulations

PMs must think strategically, set objectives, and be responsible for the overall management of a product}s life cycle.

Concern that gene and stem-cell research could lead to human cloning has generated proposals for legislative bans, which could block promising research.

Rules imposed by FDA and other regulatory agencies add legal challenges to promoting pharmaceuticals.

Ninety percent of physicians prefer to be visited by specialty sales representatives, according to Newton, PA-based Scott-Levin's strategic study, "Specialty Reps: A Growing Force."

Good territory and time management is the foundation of all successful selling, and successful territory and time management involves thorough knowledge of your territory.

Television is now the most widely used medium for direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, according to the latest study conducted by Market Measures Interactive, Livingston, NJ. In 2000, TV accounted for $949.5 million, 62% of all DTC ad dollars, up from the 57% of DTC budgets directed to TV in 1999. The rise in TV spending contrasts with a noticeable decline in DTC dollars directed to print media, including magazines and newspapers. As of September 2000, print media were attracting only 36% of DTC dollars - a drop from the 42% spent on DTC print ads in 1999.

And what you can do about it.

Call preperation made easy.

HIV-positive individuals find it difficult to comply with their drug regimens, according to data from "The Survey on Treatment Adherence by HIV-positive People," a confidential survey conducted by Chicago-based Savitz Research and underwritten by GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, NC.

Spending for all healthcare in the United States topped $1.2 trillion in 1999, up 5.6% from 1998, but continued a six-year trend of growth below 6%, according to a report by the Health Care Financing Administration. HCFA projections of future healthcare spending predict faster growth over the next decade, although not at the high rates of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Are managers losing the battle of sales force turnover?

Joe Sharpe came to pharmaceutical sales with a strong background in customer service, and it shows.

In a profession in which success is often driven by long hours, the concept of cutting back to a part-time job may seem foreign, but a reduction in hours can sometimes be necessary for even the most dedicated reps. New York-based Pfizer Inc. has responded to this need by creating its part-time field sales force, Vista Rx. Launched in April 1999 as a pilot program with 70 reps, Vista Rx allows sales representatives to work 60% of a full-time schedule while retaining the benefits and privileges of full-time employees, making it the first of its kind in the industry.

During the first years of HIV infection, women have significantly lower amounts of the virus in their blood than men, according to one of the largest studies ever to examine gender-specific differences in HIV infection. Despite their lower initial viral levels, women suffer the loss of immune cells and develop AIDS just as swiftly as men. The findings, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 344, no. 10), lend further support to recent changes in the criteria used to help doctors tailor anti-HIV drug therapy to delay the onset of AIDS.

Westport, CT-based IMS Health has released data from its annual "World Review" report showing that audited global pharmaceutical sales grew 10% in 2000 to $317.2 billion, up from $295.9 billion in 1999. "The IMS Health World Review" tracks actual sales of approximately 90% of all prescription drugs and certain over-the-counter products in more than 60 countries. Proprietary data projection methodologies are used to estimate total global pharmaceutical sales, which grew to $354 billion in 2000.