Pharma Veterans

Ethical Issues in Pharmaceutical Marketing – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1005 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1005 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Anna Shvets Credit: Eva Bronzini Pharmaceutical Marketing is a different type of marketing because the customer is not consumer. In all other commodities, such as food, appliances, textiles, shoes etc., customer and consumer are the same person, unless someone buys for someone else as a gift which is a fraction of total business. In Pharma marketing, customer is doctor and consumer is patient. Pharma companies are not allowed by law to approach patients directly for selling medicines. Nutritional supplements such as vitamins, health foods, probiotics, energy boosters etc., are not supposed to treat any disease and are therefore allowed to adv

Longevity – Other Aspects – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1004 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1004 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Ali Pazani Credit: Boom Credit: Mikhail Nilov Long Life or Longevity is a complicated matter and raises several ethical, social, economic, and global issues. This post highlights some of these aspects. Equity and Access The potential for longevity technologies to be accessible primarily to the wealthy, as is the case at present, raises significant concerns about justice and inequality. If only affluent individuals can afford life-extending treatments, this could exacerbate existing health disparities and create a societal divide where longevity becomes a privilege rather than a universal right. Religious Beliefs Most religions endorse a fixed lifespan allocat

Long Live Every One !! – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1003 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1003 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Artem Podrez Credit: Darina Belonogova Credit: Ron Lach Credit: Tamhasip Khan The quest for living longer has been around for a ‘long’ time, if not from the beginning. Fear of death or love of life are mixed up in this sentiment. Many years ago, there was a novel by the infamous Harold Robins, in which the lead character, a wealthy person, is pursuing to live long. He had hired a team of doctors who were trying to bring down his normal body temperature to 95 degrees Fahrenheit with the claim that it will make him live to 125 years.  Longevity Market Presently, emerging technologies are making it possible to aim for longevity. A market for longevity technologies,

Absenteeism in Workplace – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1002 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1002 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Felipe Silva Credit: Ivan Samkov Credit: José Martin Segura Benites Credit: Mark Stebinick Absenteeism among office and factory workers is a significant challenge across Asia, affecting productivity and business outcomes.  Factors for Absenteeism It feels quite disturbing when an office staff suddenly sends in sick leave or casual leave. Sick leaves are mostly unjustified because today the guy is healthy and well all day, next day he reports sick, and the day next to that returns to office healthy and well again. This sickness cannot be explained, because if the sickness was serious, it would not go away in one day without leaving any mark; if it was so small,

Spiritual Health, Life, and Work – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1001 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1001 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Prince Kumar Credit: Firshad Muhammad Credit: Milo Deckert This blogpost partakes liberally from an article published in May 2024 by McKinsey based on its own survey. Link at the end. Preamble Workplace are supposed to be secular. Work is the religion that everyone subscribes to. Occasionally, in countries like Pakistan, people tend to discuss too many things in offices either because they have a lot of time to kill, or they just want to keep chattering. Religion, or rather religious elements keep coming under discussion. The topic of this post is spiritual health, not any religion. Spiritual health may be defined as having meaning in one’s life, a sen

Milestone Moment: My 1,000th Blog Post – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1000 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1000 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Wendy Wei Credit: Yulia Ilina Today Marks a Special Day on this Journey—My 1,000th Blog Post.  I took up blog writing in 2017 while I was working in Vietnam. I did some homework and made background preparation. I registered a domain and booked a dedicated space on WordPress to publish blogs – with the name https://pharmaveterans.com. I wrote a few blog posts before publishing. The rest as they say is history.  As I sit down to reflect on this achievement, I’m reminded of the many experiences, ideas, and innovations I’ve had the privilege of sharing with you over the years. My core industry is pharmaceuticals, hence the name pharma veterans. Pharm

Introverts vs Extroverts in the Workplace – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post 999 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post 999 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Nina zeynep güler Credit: Chloe Credit: Liliana Drew Credit: Mikhail Nilov Preamble Introverts are people who prefer calm environment, limited social engagement, or as psychology puts it, ‘a person characterized by concern primarily with their own thoughts and feelings’. Extroverts, on the other hand, are those people who express themselves more outwardly. They will talk animatedly about their efforts and achievement, socialize openly, and may be able to network more quickly, other factors notwithstanding. Both above have become stereotypes and are seen as much at workplace and life in general. It may be a fallacy because extrovert and introvert a

Evolving Role of Middle Managers – More Coaching – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #998 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #998 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Annushka Ahuja Credit: Antoni Shkraba Credit: Kampus Production This blogpost is inspired by HBS Working Knowledge article by Ben Rand, which is based on research by Letian Zhang, Assistant Professor of Business Administration. Most content is my own. Link to the article at the end. Hierarchies have become inflated and multilayered, and it has become difficult to identify if someone is a senior manager or a middle manager. When I joined pharma industry, the line management was a two-tier structure. There were the first line managers, and the national managers. The regional managers had different titles, district manager, zonal manager, re

Managing Polarized Conversations in Workplace – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #997 Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #997 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Artem Podrez Credit: fauxels Credit: Jopwell Polarization is now hallmark of our society. We have become divided across so many lines; it is difficult to count. Every person is aligned with multiple ideologies which keep coming into conflict with many others, making the situation very complex. Society reflects directly in workplace culture and workplaces have also become polarized. In fact, these are more polarized because of additional angles of alignment with seniors and silos formation. Polarization is palpable in meetings where many people take positions, not on merit, but due to alignments and relationships. This affects the meetings’ e