A few weeks ago, as we briefly covered news on Insys Therapeutics, we realized that the ripples of its scandal would be felt across the pond.
And indeed, qordata finds many compliance professionals in the EU pharma industry voicing concerns about the possibility of something like this happening in their own markets.
The fact that many markets in the EU allow physicians not to give publishing consent means that transparency vis-à-vis individual spend is limited. In other words, compliance concerns are not entirely unwarranted.
For medical drug and device companies in the EU, the lessons from Insys are obvious:
Lesson#1: Pharma Scandals Never Die
(And they don’t always fade away, either): Media woes for Insys Therapeutics have been around since at least 2014, and they haven’t gone away. They resurface, taking new shape according to individual State Laws and (we surmise) motivated by how much Insys is compelled to pay out in damages and settlements.
Where the reputation of some countries for pioneering drug innovation via R&D and profitable collaboration spans over a century, the implications can be far more serious than they were for Insys, which was founded in 2002. Like Insys, EU pharmaceuticals may find themselves revisited by the same compliance oversight via a different legislation.
Lesson#2: Compliance Systems Add Bottom Line Value
In a statement, Insys said it had taken steps to strengthen its compliance program. Although, in their case, this is corrective action, one does not have to see too far to see how much preventive value such a system could have added too.
Despite their pro-innovation culture, quite a few markets in the EU have an anti-technology bias. Overcoming this bias to explore technologically-friendly, transparency oriented solutions would be an investment they would never regret.
