Envisioning 2.0

This week Pharmaceutical Executive reported that pharmaceutical company Vertex recently revamped its corporate Website in order to break away from the staid online presence maintained by many drug firms.  According to the magazine:

“Vertex Pharmaceuticals, last week, took up residency on the World Wide Web with the launch of its corporate site, www.vrtx.com. Not content to look like most run-of-the-mill pharma sites, Vertex had design firm Dotglu build a virtual home that allows patients, physicians, and other visitors to easily peer into the company’s pipeline and find out what drugs are coming down the pike as well as see the faces behind the company.

‘It’s a sea of sameness when you look at pharma,’ Tomas Mendez, cocreative director at Dotglu told Pharm Exec. ‘[Other companies] just show puppies and old people waltzing and say that everything will be OK. The tag line for Vertex includes the word maybe. It’s a lot less confident, but it gives you goose bumps. There’s a humility to it, and that’s about the honesty.’”

Intrigued, I decided to take a look at Vertex’s Website to see how far the company went.  When I got there, I was greeted by an attractive site featuring the company’s robust pipeline of products, including VX-950, a hepatitis C drug that I’ve been regularly covering on this blog.  This new look is certainly impressive, but I was left a little cold.

When I read that Vertex was attempting to be more transparent and engage its stakeholders in new and different ways, I was expecting more.  Sure, Vertex’s Website is pretty, but I was looking for commentary from real people within the company on various issues impacting Vertex’s business.  Yes, Joshua Boger, Ph.D., Vertex’s CEO, has a blog where he dishes regularly about the company, but it’s only available internally.

Perhaps Vetex has plans to engage directly with its stakeholders, a la Johnson and Johnson.  If so, this would be good news – and a wise investment of human and financial resources.  If not, then Vertex’s Website is just the same old corporate-speak wrapped in a shiny new package.

Over the past few weeks, Mark Senak, who writes Eye on FDA, has been writing an excellent series focusing on where each presidential candidate stands on healthcare – especially as it relates to the pharmaceutical industry.  He not only talks about what each of them proposes to do, but points out where they could do better.  Take his analysis of Senator Barak Obama’s position on prescription drug pricing as an example:

“More than any other candidate, his site addresses each of the domains with particularity.  While the candidate gives a nod to the need for profits for drug companies for future research, when it comes to the fact that Americans are charged more for products than other countries on his importation policy, it does not take into account a global pricing structure that at this point, requires that more developed nations subsidize access for lesser developed countries.  That is an essential component for any commentary on drug pricing in America.”

Senak has done us all a great service by putting together this series.  Hurry over to his blog to learn more.

Today the Wall Street Journal reports that some companies are moving from carrots to sticks in their efforts to get their employees to lead healthier lives. According to the Journal:

“Employees at some companies who are overweight, smoke, or have high cholesterol, for instance, and who don’t participate in supplementary wellness programs, will pay more for health insurance. In extreme cases, employees’ insurance deductibles could rise by $2,000.”

Yikes.

Clearly, some companies have decided that marketing wellness programs to employees is not enough.  To get people to change, they argue, you need to hit them where it hurts: their wallets.

If more employers decide to launch similar programs, will their efforts make health promotion programs less relevant?  After all, if money changes behavior will the soft sell go the way of the dodo?