Saturday, March 1, 2008

A BONANZA FOR PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

A BONANZA FOR PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY BASED ON A
NOVEL APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE IN NEW YORK CITY



If the Pharmaceutical Industry's life blood is demand generation, prescription compliance and a robust pipeline, two of the (former) three are being pumped up by a novel program in New York City. As discussed in The New York Times on February 26, 2008, Page B3 (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/nyregion/26health.html?em&ex=1204174800&en=f310ed051efabd9a&ei=5087%0A#, ) Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that after a 2 year development effort and more than $60 million of public funding that the city was ready to equip any or all doctors with computer software (from eClinicalWorks) that can track patients records in order to provide better patient care. They project 1,000,000 patients on this system by year end!

I can only imagine what a bonanza this could be for the Pharmaceutical Industry! Assuming the system is successful and it is likely to be successful (this is my optimism at work as public funded systems projects are rarely viable on initial rollout and the complexity of the various stakeholders only exacerbates the problem) , the potential benefits for the patient and supplier are enormous There could be tightly integrated and compliance monitoring capability easily added so that it would be easy to inform/remind patients about their scripts; on line adjudication could be another step away and electronic script writing fused together to make for a far more effective and efficient health care delivery system.

The value to the industry suggests to me that the business, commercial and market development organization should start understanding and promptly backing such a system on a nationwide basis. Mayor Bloomberg suggests that “This can do for health what the Bloomberg terminal did for finance” (and by the way made the mayor a multi-billionaire). If he is even partially correct, the payback for all is monumental.

What do you think??

Send comments to larryrothmansblog@gmail.com

Contributed by: Lawrence J. Rothman, PhD

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