corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17626

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: news

Jack A
Pfizer launches e-payment system
The Finanical Times 2010 Feb 8
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/503e764c-1414-11df-8847-00144feab49a.html


Full text:

Pfizer , the world’s largest pharmaceutical group, is launching a system of electronic payment for medicines that links it directly with patients in many of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
The company this month launches its eCard programme in Russia with the aim of reaching 500,000 patients over the next year, and is gearing up for similar rapid expansion in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela.
The move could help boost use of high-priced drugs by providing discounts to the majority of patients in emerging countries who have to pay for their own medicines, while raising concerns about direct access to personal medical information by a pharmaceutical company.
Jean-Michel Halfon, head of emerging markets for Pfizer, said: “The eCard is an innovative way to partner with society, patients and governments, to help manage chronic diseases at an affordable price.”
Each patient presents their eCard to the pharmacist to receive an automatic discount on the normal retail price, giving Pfizer information on the drug purchases to reimburse the difference to the pharmacist and track patient use directly.
By allowing it to offer discounts of up to 50 per cent to patients on the pharmacy price, the move may help boost access to expensive drugs by making them more affordable, while increasing Pfizer’s sales.
It will also allow the company to monitor when patients are not returning for regular repeat prescriptions for their medicines for long-term chronic conditions, allowing it to contact patients to remind them to take their drugs – and further boosting sales.
But the pricing discounts may also trigger concerns that they influence doctors’ prescriptions, switching away from the most medically appropriate drug to a decision based on affordability. It also breaks the traditional arms’ length relationship with pharmaceutical companies, designed to limit access to confidential personal data and prevent direct marketing without the intermediary role of a medical professional.
Pfizer first launched its eCard in the Philippines six years ago, where 2.2m patients are now in the system. It has since recruited another 110,000 in Indonesia and 18,000 in Malaysia. Apart from Russia, Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela, it plans to expand in Ukraine, the Caucasus and other Latin American markets in the coming months.
Patients receive reminders to take their medicines, educational information about their disease, and are eligible for discounts of 15-50 per cent.
Drugs the company offers through the programme are typically those for long-term chronic conditions including Lipitor, its cholesterol-reducing medicine. It said its experience with Norvasc, its blood pressure control drug, showed patient adherence to the medicine rose 162 per cent as a result of the programme.

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








As an advertising man, I can assure you that advertising which does not work does not continue to run. If experience did not show beyond doubt that the great majority of doctors are splendidly responsive to current [prescription drug] advertising, new techniques would be devised in short order. And if, indeed, candor, accuracy, scientific completeness, and a permanent ban on cartoons came to be essential for the successful promotion of [prescription] drugs, advertising would have no choice but to comply.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963