Pharma sales focus sharpens; India and generics remain hot
this year, while interest continues to remain high on the topics of
India and generics.
This industry snapshot comes courtesy of UK-based online pharma intelligence provider, Piribo, after a survey of its webstats for January to mid-June 2006.
The intense focus on sales pinnacles a shift from the top preoccupations of 2005, when India, generic drugs and patent expiries were the hottest subjects and sales, covered by market share by company or country and top selling drugs, didn't feature at all.
"The fact that sales has been the most important subject must be positive for the ethical industry, as it fights back against the threats of expiring patents and generic competition which preoccupied the industry last year," said Edwin Bailey, managing director of piribo.com.
Subjects filling the remaining top ten spots this year include Europe, patents, cancer, USA, clinical, marketing and drug pipelines, said Piribo.
These are in stark contrast to the topics of interest highlighted by Piribo at the end of last year, which included pricing and reimbursement, Alzheimer's disease, clinical trials, intellectual property, pain and biotechnology - demonstrating that the shift in pharma industry focus has branched beyond the top spot.
There was also a fresh face at the top of the list of pharma companies attracting the most interest, with Pfizer - who did not feature in last year's top five - claiming the top spot.
GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and sanofi aventis also attracted a great deal of attention, however, Bristol-Myers Squibb - the most popular company searched for in 2005 - was nowhere to be seen in this year's top five.
Piribo said that interest in the pharma information on its websites came from countries across 80 per cent of the globe, with the most active researchers in the US, UK and India, as per last year.
Of great interest is the fact that the United Arab Emirates, showing a 6,200 per cent increase in activity came in fourth place, with Russia in fifth. Hits from Germany fell again this year from fourth place to seventh.
"The considerable interest coming from the Arab countries is intriguing," said Bailey.
"Less surprising is the interest from Russia whose pharma market is forecast to reach $7.5bn (€5.9bn) by 2010."
