Awards Digitas Health Wins OMMA Award Digitas Health was a named a winner in the OMMA Award in the Website Excellence in the Integrated Online Campaign, Health & Pharmaceutical category for the MedImmune Good to Share campaign. The OMMA Awards celebrate the year’s best in online media, marketing, and advertising. Genentech ­Scientist Wins 2010 Lasker Award Genentech’s Napoleone Ferrara is the winner of the 2010 Lasker Award for clinical research for the discovery of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a key to blood-vessel formation, which led to his creation of a treatment that restores sight to people blinded by the effects of wet age-related macular degeneration. Dr. Ferrara’s research led to Lucentis, the first therapy shown to improve vision in some patients with wet age-related macular degeneration. Lilly wins 2010 National Health Information Award Lilly USA was selected as a winner in the 17th annual National Health Information Awards. This program recognizes the nation’s best consumer health information programs and materials. Lilly’s Journey to Wellness Collection received a Silver Award for its total health information program. The Journey to Wellness Collection provides tools that help patients improve their health while living with diabetes. One segment, called Help Your Heart, includes print brochures, office materials, and customizable letters and articles for health care providers to use to educate patients about the effects diabetes can have on the heart. Other segments provide similar materials for eye health and foot health. PATENTS U.S. Pharma Companies Face Revenue Declines Pharmaceutical companies are set to lose $42 billion in U.S. sales from drugs facing patent expiration between 2011 and 2012, according to Datamonitor’s new report US Pharmaceutical Market Overview. Consequently, U.S. sales for the top 50 pharma companies are forecast to decline by an average of 2.2% year-on-year between 2010 and 2015. U.S. healthcare reform is set to improve coverage but this will be at the expense of containing healthcare costs. Although the pharma industry will benefit from the rise in insured individuals, measures such as the increased Medicaid drug rebate and Medicare donut hole discount will have an immediate negative impact on revenue through to 2014. EMPLOYER COSTS Employers Controlling Drug Benefit Costs Employers are effectively controlling drug benefit costs and use, according to research in the Pharmacy Benefit ­Management Institute’s 2010-2011 Prescription Drug Benefit Cost and Plan Design Report, which was sponsored by ­Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America. The survey shows the average rate of increase in drug costs was 6.3%. Key findings include: n The use of co-insurance ­benefit structures almost doubled for all drug tiers from 2009 to 2010. n There was a significant decline in the number of employers offering retiree drug coverage, which declined from 45.9% to 31.5% from the prior year. n The impact of generics ­continues to rise, ­representing 65.2% of all prescriptions dispensed in the surveyed population. n Employers are beginning to adopt coverage and ­reimbursement strategies for genetic testing, with 5.1% of respondents saying a ­strategy was already in place. Tuning in… Featured Podcast Streamlining Clinical Research with Electronic Trial Master Files Featured Thought Leader: James DeSanti, PharmaVigilant Featured Webseminar Pharma Cast Study: Driving Business Performance with Customer Experience Solutions Sponsored by: Angel Inc. CORPORATE R&D Innovation Still Strong in Healthcare Total R&D investment among the world’s top spenders on innovation dropped in 2009 for the first time in the 13 years studied by Booz & Company, but by sector healthcare remained strong. Healthcare landed in the No. 2 spot, increasing R&D by 1.5%, slower than the ­industry’s revenue growth rate of 6.0%. Pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding took the top position for innovation ­spending, having boosted its R&D spend 11.6% to $9.1 ­billion. Healthcare companies represented five of the top 10 spots on the list and seven of the top 20. In addition to Roche, Microsoft was ranked No. 2 and Pfizer ranked No. 5. Overall, Booz’s study revealed that the 1,000 ­companies that spent the most on R&D decreased their total spending by 3.5% to $503 ­billion in 2009.

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