Strategy making in medical markets

Pharmaceutical marketers have traditionally relied heavily on the diffusion of innovation model and the associated idea of the key opinion leader. However, these ideas are strongly rooted in consumer markets and have little empirical support in the complex, professional decision making process typical of pharmaceutical markets. This article, co-authored with senior staff from Cegedim, considers as an alternative the concept of communities of practice model and discusses the implications of this for future research and the practice of pharmaceutical marketing.

Changes in pharma’s market environment will drive the extinction of current business models and the evolution of new ones. What will pharma companies have to do to survive and thrive in this new world? This third in a series of three articles looks at the decisions that the pharmaceutical industry’s leaders face.

The global pharmaceutical industry is on the brink of huge change, squeezed between what science makes possible and economics makes practical. But what might that change be? If this industry is to continue to make its huge contribution to society, more than speculation and informed guesswork is required; this knowledge-based industry needs to apply science to understanding its own fate. This first in a series of three articles looks at the future for pharma and what that prediction implies.

Medical technology procurement policies often seem designed to prevent the efficiency improvements they are intended to achieve. Research by EHTI is looking at ways to remedy this contradiction.