Will pharmaceutical companies face a better market environment after the epidemic?

A sudden outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia has disrupted the pace of development in the whole society and the whole industry It is estimated that with the resumption of various industries in the first half of this year, the dilemma faced by the pharmaceutical industry may be alleviated But there are also views that this idea may be too optimistic After the epidemic, there are still many practical challenges, even more severe challenges for pharmaceutical enterprises, which need to be addressed A sudden outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia has disrupted the pace of development in the whole society and the whole industry, and the pharmaceutical industry is no exception The most direct impact is that the traditional marketing that most pharmaceutical enterprises rely on to survive has been subversive In Tu Honggang's view, the traditional marketing model of pharmaceutical enterprises is very clear: first, point-to-point visits to doctors by representatives or agents; second, various department meetings, salon meetings, city meetings and other meetings organized by enterprises Visit + meeting, and then properly cooperate with the customer, a complete and high-output offline marketing system will be constructed However, this model is obviously unsustainable under the epidemic "Delegates can't get in, doctors can't get out, all meetings are closed." For enterprises, it is almost inevitable to think about the transformation of marketing mode More importantly, this situation does not seem to improve rapidly with the end of the epidemic Many pharmaceutical companies, pharmaceutical representatives, including agents, CSO enterprises, may face a far less optimistic form than expected In recent days, the double cold of vigilance policy and market, a document of great concern to the industry is the key points of medical security work in 2020 issued by the State Medical Security Bureau in early February The focus of the industry is that the document clearly states: "do a good job in the centralized procurement of the second batch of drugs, and let people use the drugs after price reduction in April We will establish a standardized centralized drug procurement mechanism organized by the state, strengthen organizational support and platform professional support, and promote new procurement models, marketing models, and industry ecology as the leading forces " In fact, the introduction of the key work of medical insurance in 2020 and the requirements of time nodes for volume procurement that have not changed before have been made clear from the fact level: at least volume procurement has not been affected by the epidemic and has lagged behind According to Tu Honggang, not only will national centralized mining not stop or slow down, but it is likely to continue to expand its scale and scope and accelerate its progress in the future He further pointed out the basis of judgment: as the macro-economy is impacted by the epidemic, in fact, the source of medical insurance fund income must also be significantly affected When the total cost of medical insurance is tight, we still need to bear the increasing expenditure of medical insurance caused by the epidemic, so it is basically a necessity to continue to strengthen the cost control "At this time, if we do not control the cost and reduce the unreasonable expenditure, the whole national health insurance expenditure and the national economy will be affected." More importantly, with the gradual development of purchasing with volume, the overall market capacity reduction is inevitable Tu Honggang pointed out that the volume of procurement for most enterprises does not exist at this stage "On the whole, it's good for 'barefoot' participants For API enterprises and export-oriented enterprises, such enterprises may benefit." From the perspective of the effect of volume procurement before, although the bid winning enterprises are guaranteed in volume, the market capacity of relevant products is actually shrinking "Take atorvastatin calcium tablets as an example Under stable conditions, the total market size of atorvastatin calcium tablets not included in the national centralized mining is 12 billion to 13 billion yuan After entering the centralized mining, the volume may double, but the final market size may fall to 3 billion to 4 billion yuan." Due to the price comparison effect, the total market size of other anti lipid drugs will also be squeezed With the change of sales pattern and circulation pattern caused by volume purchase, and the delay of return to work caused by epidemic situation, there are also challenges for CSO and agents Under the requirements of compliance, CSO needs to keep the "evidence chain" Previously, the evidence chain mainly came from academic exchange meetings and enterprise meetings, but the reality is that academic meetings before May were stopped due to the epidemic At the beginning of February, the official wechat of several specialized branches of the Chinese Medical Association issued the notice on the postponement of the academic meeting of the Chinese Medical Association from February to April The announcement said novel coronavirus epidemic situation in the current trend of development, decided to postpone the Chinese Medical Association 2~4 month all academic meetings, May and beyond the academic conference as a case study of the development of the epidemic For CSO enterprises, this will undoubtedly involve the re integration of the "evidence chain", and even have an impact on business development At the same time, the impact also affects the business aspects of medical representatives For medical representatives, the traditional offline visits, meetings and maintenance of customer information are transferred to the online form due to the epidemic, the offline marketing system is impacted, and the efficiency of academic promotion is affected to a certain extent Tu also predicted that medical marketing might become the last industry to return to work: "in terms of the actual situation of the epidemic, iatrogenic infection is one of the very important ways of infection, even after the resumption of work in other industries, the hospital may still be in the regulatory stage It is expected that the impact of the epidemic on the marketing of the pharmaceutical industry will probably recover in June or even later For pharmaceutical enterprises, the academic coverage of products and the failure to change the concept of prescription will lead to insufficient sales potential, and even affect the promotion of other product lines of pharmaceutical enterprises Accurate academic promotion is very important for pharmaceutical companies " The accelerated transformation of 02 drug purchase mode also accelerated the transformation of patients' drug purchase mode, and the hospital market moved to the outside market in a large amount in a short period of time In the demand of epidemic control, the frequency of patients' medical treatment is significantly reduced, especially for patients with chronic diseases, so they have to choose the way of online consultation or drug purchase According to the sales of medical and health products on Alibaba platform, the data of OTC, prescription drugs, health food, medical devices, health products and other medical and health categories show that after the nationwide prevention and control of the epidemic started on January 20, the online sales data showed a small peak from January 20 to January 29, 2020, while the sales data of the same period last year showed a low trough State From the perspective of segmentation, medical devices have grown substantially, and the growth is due to the surging demand for masks During the epidemic period, during the period from January 20 to January 29, the online trading volume of masks increased by about 200 times compared with the period from December 22 to January 19, 2019, and by about 20000 times compared with the same period in 2019 Masks have replaced sphygmomanometers and blood glucose meters to become the first category of Ali health medical equipment However, due to the supply chain not keeping up in time, the first week of the outbreak has been basically out of stock, which still needs to be alleviated Among the prescription drugs, the respiratory system, antipyretic and analgesic, immune regulation, anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory, paediatric drugs increased significantly since the beginning of the epidemic (calculated on January 20) After the outbreak of the epidemic, during the period from January 20 to January 26, the trading volume of antipyretics and analgesics increased most obviously Li Weimin analyzed that the growth may mainly come from people's "panic buying" In the sales data of 20 days after January 30, due to the acceleration of the chronic disease patients' partial transfer to the online, the increase of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular categories was the most, and the increase of hepatobiliary drugs needed for daily use was also significantly increased Among OTC categories, the trading volume of cold and cough, vitamin and mineral, antipyretic and analgesic, throat, children's cold and other categories increased most significantly after the outbreak Among them, OTC products for cold and cough increased the most, with the trading volume increased about 127% in the 20 days after January 30 compared with the 30 days before January 20 Li also observed that from the perspective of the sales trend of epidemic prevention and control and treatment products, the influence of community operation and wechat business sales channels may be increasing During the plague period, the sales volume of online medicine e-commerce, o2o and wechat commerce will increase significantly At the same time, it also revealed a trend from the data After the outbreak of previous outbreaks, products such as oseltamivir and Lianhua Qingwen have become more and more beneficial products Li Weimin suggested that manufacturers of respiratory, heat clearing, detoxification and antiviral industries should establish a long-term tracking mechanism for influenza or epidemic as early as possible to adjust and mobilize the supply chain in a timely manner From the data, it can be found that for pharmaceutical companies, the proportion of online channels in out of hospital opportunities is increasing With the gradual adjustment of Internet drug sales policy barriers, it is also necessary to accelerate the construction of digital marketing According to Tu Honggang, it is the key to the success of digital marketing to get the support of the first-line Bu, gradually invest, continuously invest and improve the input-output ratio.