The healthcare system represents an extremely complex dynamic and due to its size can be a primary driver of a country’s economic engine. There are many different incentives and restrictions governing the use of an individual pharmaceutical product and many different agendas along the way. Before a solution to the patient’s problem may be presented, it has to face a complex path from the scientist at one end to the sufferer at the other. 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. The pharmaceutical consulting firm helps the company understand how it needs to educate the consumer. Pharmaceutical companies regularly operate on the sharp end of discovery and their revelations may be truly ground-breaking. Without an adequate marketing channel, these findings might never make their way via the regulators to the front-line professionals. 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. It should be noted that certain principals within the industry have an incentive to steer healthcare practitioners and their patients toward older, or generic medications and that these agendas may not be in the best interests of the sufferer. Pharmaceutical companies have a clear incentive to trumpet the benefits of their wares in such a noisy marketplace and help to create a dynamic and forward thinking mindset.

Sometimes, the vested interests are very powerful and do not serve the ultimate client best. While healthcare reform and especially its associated finances remain a hot button issue, the pharmaceutical company must do everything in its power to ensure that its lines of communication are open. 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. Previous generations would surely marvel at some of the cures available today. Much emphasis must be put on marketing “the word” to ensure that our health care continues to improve.

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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