Pharmaceuticals inside out

    Recently, more and more actively began to talk about lobbying the interests of pharmaceutical companies by doctors and pharmacies. New draft legislative acts are widely debated (for example, the FAS is preparing a number of amendments to legislative acts) - all this, of course, is understandable. But let's figure it out whether doctors, pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies “sin” of their own free will, or whether they have to resort to such methods.

    Pharmaceutical business is also a business!


    Companies investing heavily in the development of the so-called original drugs, trying to subsequently benefit from this. The word “benefit” in relation to medicines slightly hurts the ear. But the pharmaceutical business is also a business and there is no getting around it.

    Let's try together to model the stages of this business.
    1. The research phase. The company begins research work on the creation of a new drug and its testing. As a rule, drugs are developed to treat the most relevant and common diseases. A new drug should have some unique advantages over other drugs to treat the same disease. Probably the most expensive and longest stage.
    2. Clinical research phase. Also an expensive step. Large-scale clinical trials are being conducted involving a large number of medical specialists in different countries to confirm the high efficacy and safety of the new drug.
    3. Registration stage. A drug is registered under a specific trade name.
    4. Sale. Here, in theory, profit should finally begin. But which of the doctors or pharmacy workers will recommend your “abracadabrin”, even if it is super-effective. We must somehow declare ourselves! It's time to recall the dictum “Advertising is the engine of trade”! Of course, rude in relation to medicine, but it is!
    5. Promotion This is where the “advertisement” begins. In the pharmaceutical business, it is special - indirect. For example, prescription drugs cannot be advertised directly to consumers - on TV, in newspapers, etc. On the way between the manufacturer and the consumer stands a doctor or pharmacist in a pharmacy. They were called "prescriber" in pharmaceutical companies for this.

    It’s logical, probably, to come to an agreement with the very prescriber than to break the law. It is for this that pharmaceutical companies in their state have countless representatives and even entire promotion departments.

    It would seem that there is nothing wrong with this scheme. Normal business. But subsequently, at the end of the so-called patent term, our “abracadabrin” begin to produce many other companies under other trade names. This is done in order to “bite off a piece of cake”. These medicines are called generics. Their prices, as a rule, are much lower. There are pharmaceutical companies that produce only generics, while not investing in the development of original drugs.

    Now the doctor and the patient have to choose not the drug itself, but its trade name. It becomes a shame for the developer company that another company will earn part of the profit from its investments (and sometimes the lion's share). That is why tough and sometimes not ethical competition begins.

    Doctors are good too.


    In such an environment, new “talents” of doctors are opening up - the ability to “breed” representatives of pharmaceutical companies for various benefits. Here, goods are meant from banal souvenirs and pens to “trips to the warm seas”. Doctors have a position: “Whoever spins is better, we will prescribe the drug.” The most decent doctors become "actors" - they play the role of a doctor who goes to collaborate (to give more :), but in practice they are still guided by common sense. True, one of my doctor's friends struck me with his decency: before prescribing a drug, he opens a directory and writes out all the trade names of the prescribed drug from there, and the patient chooses what he can afford. Pharmacies and pharmacy chains also do not behave in the best way.

    Where is the consensus?


    So how should the drug reach patients? How should doctors learn about new, modern drugs? Will government structures be able to provide doctors with information?

    In my opinion, this whole problem can be solved as follows:
    • Prohibit the appointment of trade names, discharge only according to international names: doctors should not think about trade names, but about treatment regimens accepted in medicine.
    • To fix the price range for products with more than one brand name: manufacturers of original drugs will not be “offended”, and generic companies will not be profitable to produce them because they will buy the original one.
    • Require pharmacies to transfer all trade names of the drug and let the patient choose the one that he can afford.
    • Assign responsibility for informing medical and pharmacy workers about new drugs (their international names) on government agencies.
    What is the opinion of the community?

    Also popular now: