Our healthcare system is extremely complicated, with a lot of moving parts, but is nevertheless one of our most important economic drivers. Within this industry, a new product must face complex restrictions and the attention of a variety of different parties. Before a pharmaceutical products can be brought to the market, it faces a difficult road from the desk of a scientist to the hand of the consumer. In the dissemination of information, pharmaceutical consultants help to ensure that all those who have an input into the decision-making process are fully aware of all the repercussions.

A pharmaceutical company is far more than just a manufacturer of health products and solutions. As a pharmaceutical consulting firm stresses, the company owes the consumer in general a debt of revelation. Pharmaceutical companies regularly operate on the sharp end of discovery and their revelations may be truly ground-breaking. If they have not paid sufficient attention to marketing, all the exploratory work may fail as the path through the regulators to the professionals may seem unclear. Marketing also insists that the product features and benefits are correctly communicated to the financiers, principally the insurance companies, who seem to have an ever-increasing role in the dissemination of care.

Before a new product may arrive on the desk of the regulators, who determine its future, the company must have marketed both its products and its history within a very competitive and busy environment. There are a lot of vested interests to take into account and some of these interests may promote older or generic medications, sometimes to the general detriment of the patient. Pharmaceutical companies must create a position within such a difficult marketplace, in order to push science and discovery and their own significant position forward.

It is unfortunate that the ultimate care of the patient is very often not the ultimate goal of certain vested interests. In popular opinion, healthcare reform is always controversial and the pharmaceutical company would do well to accurately and forcefully communicate its position. The harried physician must listen to many different interested parties before a decision can be made about the patient, including the views of other professionals, training and education, patient restrictions, formularies, best practices and traditions. Statistics tell us that 90% of the most frequently prescribed drugs are generics and thus it is difficult for pharmaceutical companies to ensure that they are being heard in the right place at the right time. In most cases, pharma consulting firms are used to this difficult environment and can certainly help to open channels and engage practices.

Pharmaceutical companies have been responsible for many of the most amazing discoveries in the world of medicine. Cures that would have been unheard-of a generation ago are now commonplace. To enable healthcare to continue to get better, much emphasis must be placed on marketing.

Alan Gillies is the Director of L2L Consulting, an elite pharmaceutical consultancy firm which specialises in Strategy Development and Implementation Excellence for prestigious multi-national organisations.

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