Saturday, January 04, 2014

Breaking up the pharma-doctor nexus

Drug major GSK may have created a flutter in the pharma industry recently when it announced "revolutionary'' changes to stop aggressive marketing of medicines.

TOI has a great article on how GSK is cleaning up its act in India by refusing to bribe doctors !
This is a very healthy trend - and can help to heal a sick healthcare system. Hopefully , Indian pharma companies will also copy this ( and not just their molecules !)


The article talks about  Indian pharma companies will "benefit" as a result of GSK taking the high moral ground. This is very short-sighted. There are major advantages to taking the high moral ground and this move will pay off in the long run. Not only will it help GSK ( because ethical doctors will prefer prescribing brands produced by ethical companies), it will help patients as well  ( as GSK will be wasting less money on bribing doctors, and can spend this on promoting patient advocacy instead ). If GSK can do this, then why can't all pharma companies ?

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