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The American Medical Association launched a new company with data-integration firm Axciom to sell information from AMA's 870,000-file database of physicians. The Chicago-based 50/50 joint venture, HealthCarePro Connect, will use AMA's files to create a customized database that it claims will benefit both marketers and doctors. The service's advantages to marketers are obvious-they will be able to access the member data of o­ne of the largest and most respected healthcare organizations, providing a o­ne-stop source of potential promotional targets. But HealthCarePro Connect claims it will also make the service attractive to the physicians o­n its call list. According to the company, Axciom's proprietary software AbiliTec will manage the data while guarding its privacy.

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More than a fifth of the people in the European Union are age 16 or under, yet at least half of the medicines in use there have not been tested o­n children. As a result, the region suffers from a lack of information about the safety and efficacy of pediatric medicines and of off-label pediatric use that medical experts say could cause adverse effects and even death.

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Consumer outrage at daily reports of new financial scandals creates a dangerous environment for corporate reputations, but pharma companies can turn the public's low opinion-and questions about rising drug prices-to their advantage if they work systematically to build long-term trust. There is no magic formula-just a combination of strategic and operational initiatives that maintain and reinforce a company's good standing. (See "Building Blocks,") This article identifies those components and suggests activities that foster the delicate alignment of strategy, communication, and leadership that drives positive reputation in both good times and bad.

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The prices of the 50 most prescribed drugs for senior citizens rose, o­n average, by nearly three times the rate of inflation last year, according to a new report released by the Washington-based advocacy group Families USA. The study analyzed price increases for the 50 most commonly prescribed drugs for seniors in the last year (January 2001 through January 2002), in the past five years and in the past ten years. The report found that last year, nearly three quarters (36 out of 50) of these drugs rose at least o­ne-and-one-half times the rate of inflation, while over o­ne-third (18 of 50) rose at three or more times the rate of inflation.

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Instead of developing innovative therapies, pharma companies devote most of their resources to modifying existing medications, according to a report from the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation (NIHCM). Industry responded by calling the report a "cheap shot" that ignores the fact that many so-called me-too medicines improve and save lives.

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Aventis Leaders (left to right) Gerald Belle, Richard Markham, and Thierry Soursac meet o­n a rare day when all three are at the company's North American headquarters in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Trying to keep pace with news about Aventis is like trying to bail water out of a canoe with a teaspoon. In December alone, during the time of year when most corporate offices look like ghost towns except for the blinking lights of Christmas trees, the company submitted four new drug applications (NDAs), announced a major o­ncology research collaboration deal, revealed positive clinical trial results supporting a new indication for its flagship brand, and sold two business units to the tune of nearly $1 billion.

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European Union-The European Commission’s ban o­n GlaxoSmith–Kline’s dual pricing policy in Spain halts o­ne of Big Pharma’s attempts to prevent parallel imports in Europe. GSK introduced dual pricing in 1998 to prevent drugs sold in the low-priced Spanish market from finding their way into the higher-priced British, German, and Scandinavian markets. Under the dual system, pharmaceuticals sold to Spanish wholesalers in the domestic market had o­ne price, and wholesalers elsewhere paid a higher premium.

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A flood of counterfeit medications into the Nigerian market is causing great concern among the nation's regulatory authorities, according to a British Medical Journal report. Many fakes may contain a small amount of the active ingredient but not enough to make them therapeutically useful. Under-strength antibiotics represent a significant public health problem, as the inadvertent administration of them can lead to bacterial resistance.

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The newest study released by the Association of Medical Publishers (AMP) suggests that pharma companies could improve their return o­n investment by taking a more mathematical approach to determining the marketing mix. AMP's Analysis of ROI for Pharmaceutical Promotion (ARPP) study, a follow-up to its 2001 ROI Analysis of Pharmaceutical Promotion study (RAPP), determined companies' returns for detailing, DTC, medical journal advertising, and meetings and events spending. Study author Dick Wittink, PhD, a professor of management and marketing at the Yale School of Management, modified RAPP by analyzing more current spending data and more realistic brand size categories and by exploring ROI for the therapeutic categories of hypertension, asthma, and arthritis.

Physicians should routinely assess patients' general risk of cardiovascular disease beginning at age 20, according to new recommendations from the Dallas-based American Heart Association. The guidelines, published in the journal Circulation (vol. 106, no. 3), also recommend that physicians calculate the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in the next 10 years for people age 40 and older or for anyone who has multiple risk factors.

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