Pharma Veterans

Pharma Companies – Doing More of the Same – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #672 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #672 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. No question, we are in a difficult situation in Pakistan. All industries are in great stress, and it is not just about increasing the selling prices, there are additional challenges. Pharmaceutical industry is no exception. Stress factors for Pharma can be quickly run through like this. Pharma industry is heavily dependent on imports. With the rupee at current exchange rate, the cost increases exponentially. Add to it the increase in utilities prices, paper prices, logistics cost and so on, and the margin is all but eroded. Pharma industry selling prices are re...

Pharmaceutical Business – Trends and Challenges – Part 4 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #670 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #670 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… This series is based on a report from StartUS insights. Trend #9 – Digital Therapeutics Digital therapeutics is a new class of evidence-based therapeutic interventions which are non-pharmacological in nature. These are software-based, tech-driven solutions which may be used alone, or along with medications, devices, or other therapeutic measures. Digital therapeutics also give patients greater control over their health and therapy outcomes. A US-based startup is offering evidence-based digital therapeutics for the treatm...

Pharmaceutical Business – Trends and Challenges – Part 4 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #670 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #670 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… This series is based on a report from StartUS insights. Trend #5 – Additive Manufacturing The scale and scope of development still baffles at time, though we know the technology is moving very fast. Additive manufacturing is being explored in two dimensions: one, the use of 3D printers to develop human tissue which could be used for drug development, organ engineering, and regenerative medicine; and two, another kind of 3D printers to make personalized pills. This will also allow to develop age or physiology related medi...

Pharmaceutical Business – Trends and Challenges – Part 3 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #669 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #669 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Let us talk about the international trends and compare these to our industry status. A number of reports are available that show the trends, however, Pharma Trend Report by StartUS Insights is quite pertinent to understand where the pharma industry is going. Although they review a very large number of startups and scaleups globally, for this report they analyzed a sample of 1745 startups and scaleups and identified the top ten trends. It must be emphasized that the new trends are being led by startups, not by the large p...

Pharmaceutical Business – Trends and Challenges – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #668 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #668 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Our Pace vis-à-vis the Developed Countries The gap between our Pharma industry and that in the developed countries is increasing rapidly in recent times. We had always been slow, but the rest of the world has become faster and is gaining further speed due to huge advancements in technology. Pharmaceutical business is regulated at all steps and the main regulator is Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan – DRAP. Prior to this, it was Drug Control Organization – DCO under the Ministry of Health. The staff moved to DRAP when it...

Pharmaceutical Business – Trends and Challenges – Part 1 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #667 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #667 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Pharmaceutical business, like other businesses in facing unprecedented challenges. The developments that are taking place internationally will sooner or later hit the industry here. In this series, I shall talk about the trends that are being identified internationally, and the challenges that the industry is facing, with special reference to Pakistan. The rise of local pharma was the single most important event that occurred in the Pakistan pharma market. It evolved over time, but it kept developing inexorably, and it is largely undoable. This d...

NEGOTIATIONS – Pharma Scenarios 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #666 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #666 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. We discussed in the last post that seemingly the biggest negotiations are with the suppliers and vendors. There are other critically important areas also where negotiation is required to arrive at the mutually satisfying position. Customers Pharma people deal with five types of customers: Doctors, Pharmacies, Hospitals, Distributors, and International Buyers. For long, the doctors were not in the list of people to negotiate with, but now it is so. Previously, if they accepted the product, they would give prescriptions which will convert into business for the company. N...

NEGOTIATIONS – Pharma Scenarios – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #665 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #665 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Several years ago, we were at a training course arranged specifically for our corporate. One of the topics was negotiation. The trainer divided the group into pairs and gave them each a separate version of a problem. The pair had to negotiate to reach an equitable solution. My partner was a person much junior to me. At the outset, he took up the position that he would not budge an inch from his position. No amount of discussion could convince him to reconsider, and we did not reach any conclusion till the end of allocated time. It was a role play but in real life also, w...

Eid ul Azha Mubarak – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #664 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #664 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Eid ul Azha Mubarak to Dear Readers. Prayers and Wishes for the health, well-being, safety, protection, and prosperity for you and your families. Eid ul Azha has been part of our culture since the beginning of Islam in the sub-continent. It is the same in all Muslim communities around the world. With time, many additions and embellishments have come in which increase the beauty, and sometimes, stress. Here are some pictures of Eid from around the world. The world is in real chaos at this time; diseases, wars, political unrest, social unrest, disparity, harsh weathers, environmental ...

Driven by Data – Last Part – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #663 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #663 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. This blog series is based on a report from McKinsey Digital, link of which appears at the end. Continued from Previous…… Point #4 – Data operating model treats data like a product Presently, the data is stored by individual departments and functions and protected as their property disregarding whether it is confidential or not. In this way, the data is split in so many ways that an overall sense cannot be made of it. There is a lot of duplication also which happens due to silos already present in most organizations. The IT department neither has control over data nor has acce...

Driven by Data – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #662 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #662 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. This blog series is based on a report from McKinsey Digital, link of which appears at the end. Point #1 – Data is embedded in every decision, interaction, and process The developed countries are still not there yet fully, but they often use data-driven approaches and have started using AI-driven automation for those processes which are predictive and repetitive. They still use data for other purposes where greater human input is required. By 2025, nearly all employees are expected to routinely use data to support their work. They would also look for innovative data techniques to...

Driven by Data – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #661 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #661 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. The world has been generating data since centuries. It was recorded in whatever forms were available with time. The start of computer increased the storage capacity rapidly and it is continuing. Look around today and see how much data is being generated every minute. We see hundreds of cameras in shops, offices, homes, on roads, which are continuously generating data. Millions of mobile phones are generating and storing data every second. The office workers in all trades and industries are generating data. Internet in its various forms is generating huge amounts of data. The question is ...

GALLUP State of the Global Workplace Report 2022 – Part 3 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #660 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #660 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Gallup, the famous US company has released its state-of-workplace-report-2022. Gallup is better known for polls and surveys; what is less known is that it is also a consulting company with a big reputation. Gallup also pioneered the concept of Strengths and is updating it regularly. The next five parameters are reported below followed by discussion on our region in more detail. Social – Not treated with respect all day yesterday – Global 11% It is an important measure to see the life environment. South Asia reports highest percentage at 19%; CIS...