European drug prices to be slashed stifling the development of new medicines and resulting in thousands of job losses.

Drug companies are expecting further price reductions to be enforced across Europe in the next 18 months.

European governments have started to introduce austerity measures in a trend that looks likely to continue in to 2011.

Greece

The most drastic austerity measures of any European country but this could have consequences across the region considering the affects of reference pricing and parallel imports.  Drug prices have been cut between 20-27%.

I previously mentioned the situation in Greece in an earlier blog entry

Germany

Pharmaceutical companies have historically been able to set their own prices in German leading to some of the highest across Europe.  The German government has proposed legislation to force drug prices based on a set cost-effectiveness criteria.

A price cap for patented drugs has also been introduced.  These measures aim to reduce prices potentially save the German healthcare system around 2 billion euros a year. Continue reading “European drug prices to be slashed” »

Over the past few years the number of GP Representatives within the UK has halved with a shift to specialist Key Account Manager (KAM) role selling to local health managers within the 152 PCTs.

Andrew Lansley’s White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS released yesterday will turn this on its head and hand commissioning power back to GPs, in a similar system to the general practitioner fund-holding scheme introduced by the conservative Major government in 1991.
The Government proposals look to hand 80 per cent of the £105 billion NHS budget to consortia of GPs with an independent NHS commissioning board allocating budgets to these consortia.
Centre-right think tank Civitas states that there is little evidence suggesting GPs will be more effective at commissioning than PCTs.  In its report Civitas suggests that the plans could well lead to a dip in NHS performance and wipe out any chance of achieving the £20bn efficiency savings target.

GPs themselves seem to have mixed views regarding the proposals.  Whilst many believe this presents an opportunity for clinicians to lead from the front and make a real difference to their patients’ health it is also reported that many practices are not ready and the timeframe for implementation is extremely optimistic.

NHS Alliance press release

NAPC press release

In the white paper PCTs and SHAs will be scrapped and GPs will have full financial responsibility from April 2013.  So over the next couple of years are we  about to see a re-emergence of the primary care representative and the number of these  jobs increase within the UK.

I was pleased to attend the Inaugural HR in Pharma Networking Event at the Royal College of Physicians, London on 25^th June 2010 http://tinyurl.com/39oh8eh .This was kindly hosted by CK Clinical and provided a useful insight into current topics that affect recruitment in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

The first speaker was Fiona Coombe who is the Director of professional Services from the REC . Fiona  gave us a useful insight into the role that the largest trade association in the private recruitment industry has to play in upholding quality.  It was an interesting overview of how they maintain a code of professional practice and code of ethics in the £33Bn recruitment industry.

The second presentation was by Mike Taylor an expert in social Media recruitment. He offered insight into the growing use of web 2.0 . Arguably the biggest change in recruitment advertising since the introduction of job boards such as our very own www.emedcareeers.com.

It was interesting to learn about the success’s of some of the early adopters embracing this technology. It is an opportunity for the recruitment business to gain access to another demographic of candidate. As supermarkets learn more about our shopping habits and tempt us with targeted offers that match our personal tastes, the same is happening online .Search engines and social media sites are literally picking up on every word you type  and targeting you with relevant advertising. This is evolving in sophistication every day and undoubtedly will become ever more viable medium for reaching potential candidates as they upload the global information highway with personal details about themselves.

There is no doubt that this does stretch media budgets ever more thinly and will affect the way our clients proportion their media budgets. It will also affect those businesses that are slow to become accustomed to web 2.0.In a finite market of jobs, every differentiator must surely help?

At emedcareers we are embracing the opportunities offered by social media to increase our candidate base and communicate with the market.  You can follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gregholt

I would like to extend a big thank you to Jonathan, Ben, Cat and all at CK Clinical for what looks to become a very useful industry forum.