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Are You Prepared for Identity Theft?
Healthcare Security Issues You Need to Know
by Garry Foster
When a stranger passes back your wallet or purse that you inadvertently dropped on the floor, that feeling of gratitude may soon dissipate when you realize that kind act was a cover-up for identification theft.
According to a recent CTV interview: “The suspect looks like a hero, but really, she’s buying time,” said Detective Const. Michael Kiproff, while going over a surveillance video at a North Toronto police station. “She knows she has about an hour from that point to do whatever it is she set out to do.”
During the interview, Graham McWaters, a security consultant and author of “The Canadian Guide to Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft and Other Fraud,” pointed out that those circumstances, described by Detective Kripoff, are typical white collar crimes of this century.
With over twenty years of experience in the financial services industry, McWaters has first hand experience preventing personal identification theft and fraud. He will be offering identity theft prevention seminars in Canada in conjunction with Pharmahorizons to cover the exhaustive topic of securing private information for both the employee and the company.
“If you want to prevent fraud, you have to get ahead of the criminal,” states McWaters, who explains that people and organizations need to know how criminal activity takes place, how to prevent it, what to do if theft occurs, and how to protect their own personal identification and that of their clients.
“There are plenty of opportunities for people to commit breaches leading to identity theft,” he says. “We shouldn’t think that credit cards, PINs, and licenses are the only targets.”
Of obvious concern are institutional lists that might have birth dates, Social Insurance Numbers and medical histories, but the mundane donor or membership lists are also valuable to identity thieves.
Identity theft can extend beyond the personal inconvenience that might cost you hundreds of hours to rectify during work time. For example, someone might steal your identity in such a way that you don’t suffer direct impact because the fraud involves an office or institution.
“In the medical industry, people have cloned children’s identity to defraud the health care system,” says McWaters. “Cloned healthcare cards could be used by someone from another country who could have medical procedures performed. Who ends up paying for this fraudulent act?”
McWaters pointed out that privacy officers are needed in any facility whether it’s a small office or large operation. This employee would need to be aware of the privacy and technical issues relating to identity theft and be empowered to address such concerns as sensitive computer data and file transfers.
“It’s all about prevention, protection, and vigilance,” says McWaters. “The last thing your company needs is media attention. You don’t want to be in the headlines.” He warns that the next time your firm handles any private information, the public and clients will be cautious about working with you because of a previous breach.
After theft has occurred, your next option is the most expensive, explains McWaters. “You don’t want to call in a specialist organization to help pick up the pieces and restore order after a breach. Damage at that level has long-term effects on everyone involved.”
From our own personal experience, we all know the lesson that ‘an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure.’
Graham McWaters will be holding seminars in Canada titled: Identity Theft, Fraud and Risk Management. For more information, contact Dr Andrew Gregory at Pharmahorizons 877-751-9415. Pharmahorizons offers specialized training courses for the life sciences industry and is helping individuals and organizations protect themselves by securing private information through better education.
Report: Outsourcing to grow in life sciences industry
Birmingham Business Journal
The life sciences industry will see much more outsourcing overseas and domestically in 2008 as it focuses on reducing expenses to keep expanding, according to a new report.
Both pharmaceutical giants and emerging biotechnology companies will likely rely on the practice for everything from research and development to clinical trials and manufacturing, according to IDC’s Health Industry Insights in Framingham, Mass. The conclusion is one of the firm’s many predictions for the industry in 2008.
Singapore is among ideal places for outsourcing, according to the report, because the country has strong intellectual property protections and has dedicated significant investment into creating a large biotechnology industry presence.
India is also seen as an increasingly viable alternative for research and development outsourcing through lower-cost resources and trained researchers who could work in the country at a fraction of the cost.
China has been slow to attract life sciences investment due to concerns about intellectual property, according to the report, but the country has attracted many international companies seeking to outsource clinical trials or take advantage of the company’s emerging domestic market.
Health Industry Insights also predicts that manufacturing will increasingly be outsourced in order to increase efficiency and expand without incurring extra costs.
All contents of this site © American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved.
Analysts Foresee More Boutique DrugsBy Matthew Perrone
The Associated PressWASHINGTON — There is no quick remedy for what ails the pharmaceutical industry: a tougher environment for drug approvals and a dwindling pipeline of new medications.But these twin challenges — evidence that the heyday of blockbuster drug-development is over — are forcing the industry to ponder big changes in the laboratory. The biggest, analysts say, is likely to be a shift toward finding treatments for patients with rare diseases, or unusual strains of common afflictions.By focusing on boutique medications, analysts say, drug makers will arouse less scrutiny from regulators, who have become extra sensitive to the potentially fatal side effects of widely prescribed medications for ailments such as arthritis and diabetes. The growing need to market niche treatments is also dictated by the reality of the business, in that there are fewer widespread maladies for which a popular pill doesn’t already exist.A lot is riding on the industry’s ability to navigate this transition. For years, drug makers such as Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. could count on new blockbuster drugs to deliver double-digit profit growth. In the last two years, however, patents expired on Pfizer’s blood pressure treatment Norvasc, Merck’s cholesterol drug Zocor and more than $40 billion worth of other drugs. Meantime, the Food and Drug Administration delayed or denied would-be blockbuster therapies made by Sanofi-Aventis SA, Wyeth and others.With profit growth slowing across the pharmaceutical industry, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the world’s first- and second-largest drug makers, each announced plans in 2007 to lay off thousands of employees.”The hurdle has been raised, there’s no question about it,” GlaxoSmithKline Chief Executive Jean-Pierre Garnier said during a conference call to discuss third-quarter earnings. “What is unclear is exactly how we should modify our drug development plans to meet this higher hurdle.”Garnier and other executives say the FDA has become an increasingly cautious gatekeeper for new drugs, especially those to treat widespread ailments that aren’t necessarily life-threatening. And the regulatory environment will only get tougher in 2008, when new rules kick in that allow FDA to limit how widely drugs are promoted and distributed to patients and physicians.
Drug companies griping about an overbearing FDA is a familiar refrain, but data backs up their contention that the agency is quicker to issue warning labels.
The FDA announced nearly 70 new or updated black box warnings on previously approved drugs in 2007, more than twice as many as in 2004, according to government data compiled by Joyce Generali, director of the Drug Information Center at Kansas University Medical Center. The warnings are the most serious a drug can carry.
In the past year, the agency also balked at approving Sanofi-Aventis’ highly anticipated obesity drug Zimulti and sent Novartis AG and Wyeth back to the lab for more safety studies on their treatments for diabetes and menopause. The FDA also flatly rejected Merck’s arthritis drug Arcoxia, a follow-up to Vioxx, the best-selling pain medication pulled from the market in 2004 after links to heart attack and stroke were found.
The withdrawal of Vioxx triggered a flurry of congressional hearings, during which the agency’s ability to resolve drug-safety problems came under fire.
Former FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan, who left the post in early 2004, said the pressure to hold drugs to a higher standard of safety has increased dramatically since Vioxx.
FDA staff reject the bar-raising theory, pointing out that the percentage of drugs approved to those submitted has held steady in recent years.
But the agency has approved just 16 first-of-a-kind drug applications this year, a 20-year low that is 36 percent below the annual average over the last decade. FDA approved 18 first-of-a-kind drugs in 2005 and 2006, down from 31 in 2004.
Those who track pharmaceutical trends say companies share responsibility for the new-drug drought.
The number of applications for innovative drugs submitted to FDA has steadily declined since the mid 1990s, falling from a high point of nearly 60 submissions in 1995 to figures in the low 20s for recent years.
Operating under a “just say no to risk,” mantra, companies have chosen to tweak drugs already on the market rather than invest in the unknown, said Steve Brozak, an analyst with WBB Securities.
“No pharmaceutical executive has ever lost his job for saying no to a new drug project,” Brozak said. “And no FDA employee has ever lost his job for saying no to a new drug application.”
Most recent biopharmaceutical breakthroughs have been for drugs to treat smaller patient groups.
Biotech powerhouse Genentech Inc. has successfully developed cancer treatments tailored to patients’ specific genetic makeup. Meanwhile, Cambridge, Mass-based Genzyme Corp. has built a multibillion-dollar business around expensive treatments for rare diseases.
Several major pharmaceutical companies are already spending more on innovative biotechnology.
In the last year, Roche Holding Ltd. and Merck separately agreed to pay $1 billion for the rights to research drugs designed to silence genes that trigger certain diseases. The companies are banking on the research yielding personalized medicines with fewer side effects.
Investment in experimental technology, however, isn’t as widespread a reaction as Wall Street expected.
Biotech drug maker Biogen Idec Inc. surprised investors earlier this month, saying it could not find a buyer two months after putting itself up for sale. Analysts had speculated that Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis AG might be interested in the company.
There are some industry observers who, counterintuitively, believe the FDA will become more willing to approve experimental drugs when the new regulations go into effect because they will be able to react with greater force when safety issues arise.
But most see that as wishful thinking.
“The pendulum at FDA is going to be stuck at the conservative end,” said Christopher Milne, of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Eventually, Milne believes, drug companies will learn to deal with a more cautious FDA, but only because they won’t have any other choice.
© 2007 The Associated Press
Drug Promotion Takes to the Web
WASHINGTON — Patients today are less likely to bump into drug sales representatives at a doctor’s office as pharmaceutical companies adopt cheaper technologies and more discreet ways to pitch drugs.
The changes are partly in response to a backlash against overly aggressive marketing of the past decade, when many executives believed the company with the biggest sales force would have the highest sales. From 1999 to 2001, U.S. drug companies expanded their sales staffs, on average, by 42 percent, according to the most recent research available from Datamonitor.
Back then, many physicians dealt with half a dozen or more people from each major drug company as ever-larger armies of sample-toting salespeople were mobilized. But the marketing blitz took a toll on doctors.
“A lot of practices across the U.S. basically said ‘we don’t want to see you anymore because it’s too much of an interruption,’” said Dr. Dave Switzer, a family doctor based in northern Virginia who gives unannounced salespeople a minute of his time.
He may be on the generous side. Seventy-five percent of sales calls these days don’t involve a face-to-face meeting with a doctor, according to research by Leerink Swann & Co. Industry executives acknowledge increased demands on physician’s time, including paperwork required by health insurers.
However, the marketing shift goes beyond a time crunch. In recent years, media companies have increasingly scrutinized how drug companies court physicians, from handing out branded pens to funding lavish conferences at exotic locations.
“Patients are watching, medical students are watching and it’s just become harder and harder to justify these interactions,” said David Kramer, chief executive of Digitas Health, a company that specializes in online pharmaceutical marketing.
Perhaps the most important driver in the effort to improve selling techniques is the bottom line. Revenues are shrinking industrywide as many blockbuster drugs from the past decade lose patent protection. Dwindling sales recently led the industry’s biggest player, Pfizer Inc., to cut its U.S. sales force by 20 percent or about 2,500 salespeople. Rivals such as AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb have also reduced U.S. sales staff in recent years.
“We’ve made sure we have fewer representatives calling on any one physician and made those representatives more accountable for each of their relationships,” said David Snow, an AstraZeneca vice president. “And the technology actually enhances that by giving them more information and more ways to present it.”
AstraZeneca and other companies are focusing on Web-based visits between doctors and salespeople. The appointments are made for the evening or weekends, and a sales representative gives a presentation through an online video link or over the telephone while directing the physician to Web pages. Executives say it is becoming one of their most effective selling techniques.
According to Merck & Co. Inc., the average online appointment with a physician lasts 10 minutes, compared with 4 minutes for an in-person meeting.
Technology is changing how companies do sales calls in other ways. Representatives used to carry pages of company studies and medical journal articles. Using tablet PCs, sales people can present their information faster and direct the doctor to company Web pages.
Meanwhile, the tablet PC automatically records information about what was presented and how it was received and sends it back to the marketing department. This feedback can be used to judge the quality of the company’s message — and sometimes the skill of the person presenting it.
Consulting firm Exploria SPA says more than 70 percent of drug salespeople carry a tablet PC even though some representatives complain the devices allow managers to peer over their shoulders too much.
Industry executives say in-person selling will remain the core of their sales strategy although the past two years have seen an increase in online promotions that eliminate salespeople. According to one industry survey, nearly half of physicians prefer to learn about new medications through the Internet, instead of through a salesperson.
People that design these online promotions say doctors are simply displaying the same consumer preferences that have made businesses like Amazon.com and eBay so successful.
“I shop online, I consume information online and I don’t have to wait for the newspaper to hit the driveway,” said Bruce Grant, an executive with Digitas Health. “Doctors are just doing the same thing you and I are as consumers: they’re taking advantage of the full power and convenience these new media give you.”
So-called e-details include Web sites set up specifically for doctors and video presentations sent via e-mail. Increasingly, e-details amount to mini-movies, using high production values and medical experts, urging doctors to prescribe the company’s latest product.
“The traditional model that served us very well for many years is broken,” said Gary Pond, a marketing executive at Merck. “We’re going to have to evolve to a different way of doing business, and technology is one tool to help get us there.”
©TherapeuticsDaily.com
Japan Plans Generic Drug Incentives: Ministry
Agence France-Presse English Wire
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan plans to offer financial incentives to pharmacists who dispense generic drugs, aiming to reduce the country’s snowballing medical costs, an official said Thursday.
Japan is one of the largest drug markets in the world, with 6.9 trillion yen (62.2 billion dollars) spent on medication in the fiscal year to March 2005, according to an official at the health ministry.
The health ministry “has decided on a plan reviewing the whole medical service fee system for the next fiscal year” starting in April, the official said on customary condition of anonymity.
Under the plan, pharmacists would receive preferential renumeration through Japan’s national health programme if 30 percent or more of the drugs they dispense are generics, the official said.
“We want to offer incentives for them to prescribe more generics as part of our efforts to cut down on the increasing medical costs as we have limited revenue,” he said.
The target is in line with existing trends in Japan. A nationwide survey of pharmacists conducted in June showed that an average of 31.0 percent of the drugs they dispensed were generics.
“But there are still some pharmacists who don’t make any efforts at all to promote generics. If they did, the ratio of generics to the total consumption of drugs would increase,” he said.
The ministry estimates Japan’s health-care spending will swell 74 percent to 56 trillion yen by 2025 from 32.1 trillion yen in 2004 as the population is rapidly ageing and the birth rate is dwindling.
Generic drugs have been increasing in popularity around the world but in some cases have been controversial, with drug companies based in developed countries arguing that the trend reduces revenue for future research.
Thailand has jolted the industry by temporarily suspending licenses for two anti-AIDS drugs and the popular heart disease medicine Plavix, promoting generics instead, in a bid to ensure universal health care.
©Pharmalive.com