GfK Prepares Radical Pharma Launch

GfK HealthCare Asia has successfully completed two pilot surveys for its Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) program which it says 'drastically alter the playing field for pharmaceutical companies in Asia'.

The new service will give detailed information on sales rep visits and on the scale and source of prescriptions filled in the Asian market. The pilots covered the cardiology specialism in Thailand and Taiwan.

The syndicated SFE program has three main components, prescription log DRX, sales rep visit tracker DREP, and DRECALL which surveys what doctors recall about the visits – the three can be combined to give a detailed picture of sales force performance. Prescription volumes are reported every month, rather than every 6 months with some existing surveys – the latter means companies can only look 'retrospectively' when making decisions about their future, according to Ken Walsh, Director Syndicated and Surveys, Asia. Walsh says one of the hallmarks of SFE is its ability to gauge a product's performance across multiple specialties: 'When a physician prescribes a particular drug for a hypertension patient, we can identify the source, determining whether it was a cardiologist, endocrinologist, nephrologist or GP who wrote the prescription.' He concludes: 'In this market, many companies have been forced to operate in the dark, something that isn't recommended in healthcare. We're excited to be changing that.'

The GfK Group home page is at www.gfk.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.