Today, we published the results of the EFPIA anti-counterfeiting pilot project, which we blogged about previously (and received a nice editorial from Scrip).   The report is available for download here. Access the EFPIA Press release here.

People who work in healthcare occasionally become a little insular, forgetting sometimes to take a step outside of their own sector. Likewise, those of us who work in pharmaceuticals tend to think of solutions and outcomes in pharmaceutical terms, despite the fact that – as we like to remind the wider world – they are [...]

The healthcare reforms in Germany were a dramatic piece of news from last week which deserved a comment. We are therefore very grateful to the people at Scrip Magazine (the publishers), Informa (the copyright holders) and Faraz Kermani (the author) for letting us reproduce this article in full, in which Faraz gives an excellent overview [...]

There is an interesting article in the New England Journal of Medicine today (as authoritative as medical journals get), entitled Untangling the Web — Patients, Doctors, and the Internet. It addresses the issue of the changing flow of information between doctor and patient. The article states that, from a clinical practice perspective, the internet has [...]

We noted in the obituary columns recently the death of Sir James Black. Sir James was a huge figure in the development of modern medicines, yet was probably not as well known as perhaps he should have been, despite a number of landmark contributions. He invented propanolol, the first successful beta-blocker, and he was awarded [...]

The battle for healthcare reform in the US maybe taking a toll on President Obama’s popularity, but not on his personal health. In a remarkable example of openness and transparency, the results of his last medical examination have just been released. By any standards, he seems to be in fine fettle; being of similar vintage, [...]

Like more than 100 other people, I attended the European Voice Health Check debate on “The right to know? Should information to patients be restricted?” this week.  As ever in this contentious topic, there were many good observations and points made. Sadly, as this issue continues to drag its heels many of the salient points [...]

The answer it would appear, is ‘yes’. An interesting situation is developing in Ireland, where the generic industry is coming under increasing fire for their refusal to reduce prices, despite request from the Irish government to do so. The backdrop of the story is Ireland’s current financial crisis, where various measures are being deployed to [...]

EFPIA blog readers may recall that we published a post some months ago on the subject of UK pharmacists taking advantage of the weak exchange rate of UK currency against the Euro, and selling their stock to mainland Europe. Some of you may have seen this issue addressed on BBC News at ten last night [...]

The counterfeit medicines market in Western Europe is worth an estimated 10.5 billion Euro per year, according to the “Cracking Counterfeit Europe” research commissioned by Pfizer. The analysis shows how one in five of the 14,000 people surveyed in 14 European states admitted to buying prescription-only medicines without prescription, ranging from 37 – 38% in [...]