pharma biotechnology marketing strategy

Science blog meme

By MaverickNY on December 10, 2008

This meme was started by Martin Fenner of Nature Network and I got it from my pal Paulo Nuin, while browsing through my Google Reader items for some information I needed for a client project and became distracted…

My answers are as follows:

1. What is your blog about?

Mainly the science and biology of cancer, but it wanders into HIV and immunology too. I also write about new oncology drugs in development, which might be interesting to my pharma clients.

2. What will you never write about?

Gossip, innuendo and confidential stuff. Stuff like that tunes me out.

3. Have you ever considered leaving science?

No it's my passion, but I suppose doing sales and marketing in the pharma industry for a while qualified as going over to the dark side.

4. What would you do instead?

Well, I dreamed of playing football for England as a kid.

5. What do you think will science blogging be like in 5 years?

No idea, probably a lot more crowded that it is now.

6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?

Through blogging I found Twitter, and from there followed Robert Scoble the tech geek. We must have swapped our Google Reader feeds some time because the next thing I knew, I was being followed by Scott Hensley who edits the WSJ Health blog. He contacted me to say Robert had persuaded him to sign up to Twitter at a conference in NY where he was demonstrating web 2.0 technologies. One of the things in his Google Reader shared items from friends was one I had shared – from the WSJ Health blog.

I thought that was rather cool and had no idea until Scott mentioned it. Web 2.0 technologies enable incredible viral connections and rapid dissemination of both information and interaction.

7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?

Thankfully no, and hope it stays that way.

8. When did you first learn about science blogging?

I first started 2 years ago but lost interest for 9 months when work got insanely busy and recently started again this year.

9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?

Surprisingly, they seem to like it and send me links for interesting articles, suggest topics and also critique posts too. Some of my clients also follow it randomly and send me emails with questions or comments, which is nice.

Who's up next?

4 Comments

UK may axe NHS top up ban, giving patients greater access to therapies

By MaverickNY on October 30, 2008

"Health Secretary Alan Johnson is expected to
announce within the next two weeks that the ban on patients paying
privately for drugs and other treatments which are not available on the
National Health Service (NHS) without forfeiting the rest of their NHS
care is to be lifted."

Source: Pharma Times

The challenge for any health care system if how to pay for ever increasing numbers of newer, more expensive drugs while maintaining standards of care.

In the UK, the Government effectively manages its limited budget by delaying or reducing the number of drugs approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and local formulary evaluations by Primary Care Trusts (PCT). This lead to a postcode lottery where patients in Sunderland could well be treated differently than patients in Salisbury, simply because one PCP allows certain therapies and the other does not.

The USA has a slightly different approach, which nevertheless has the same effect of limiting care, since it offers all the new drugs, but access is effectively limited by who can afford to pay the co-pays and whether they could afford decent health insurance or not.

The UK top up rule change may have a significant impact on cancer care, since previous outcries have occurred with breast cancer drugs such as Herceptin. If the new ruling comes into place, patients who wish to purchase Herceptin will be able to do so without fear of losing their general rights to NHS care. It may also potentially lead to faster NICE approvals, which would benefit everyone.

The FT took a more strident view though:

"But in an attempt to limit numbers affected – and to preserve so far
as possible the NHS principle that treatment be given according to
need, not ability to pay – Nice, the National Institute of Clinical
Excellence, is expected to introduce a big increase in the threshold to
assess whether such treatments for relatively rare conditions are
cost-effective.

At
the same time it is expected to issue guidance to patients who may want
to pay, underlining that the treatments in question, which can cost
thousands of pounds a month, typically extend life for a few months for
some patients and do not represent a cure."

The Government is thus ensuring some degree of "consumer protection” to avoid patients being pressed to incur big
debts for treatments with possibly only a limited impact on their life expectancy, as opposed to a cure.

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Science blog meme

UK may axe NHS top up ban, giving patients greater access to therapies