The challenge of UK pharma market access in a changing environment - by Alan Crofts

Over the last two years the pharmaceutical industry in the UK and Europe has begun to realize a change in established product management and  product sales strategy. Medicines and bio-active reagents, when brought  to the market, represent a major investment in development (costs and  resources) and time (up to 13 years). The primary sales strategy within  the industry has been to employ large numbers of drugmakers'  representatives who specialize in the primary or secondary care markets  and whose function is to directly sell to health care workers through  direct interaction. However, this sales model is compromised as a result  of the following four factors:

- lack of market access - physicians in general practitioner clinics and  hospitals are often too busy and refuse to see corporate  representatives in their working day. Furthermore, directives issued by  the National Health Service severely limit the time that the potential  customer can set aside for representative meetings;

- adherence to clinical guidelines. Increasingly, physicians will only  prescribe those products that appear on their own, or national clinical  guidelines, ie, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE)  or Scottish Medicines Consortium.