• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.5-30
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• 2005

Globalization has conflicting effects on pharmaceutical policies. A change into a 'populist competitive nation' due to globalization strengthens policies to reduce drug manufacturing costs while the WTO's TRIPS Agreement that is affected by multinational pharmaceutical companies increases drug manufacturing costs by bolstering the patent rights on new drugs. Currently, the independency of populist nations' policies to reduce drug manufacturing cost is being compromised because multinational organizations(such as the European Union) which represents the interests of the multinational pharmaceutical companies put restrictions on the pharmaceutical policies of populist nations for purposes of promoting the industrial goals of the multinational companies. Korea is no exception. Up until the late 1990s, the main feature of the pharmaceutical policies in Korea was keeping the drug price at the cost level based on a growth-driven ideology, and this was Korea's unique policy tools as a developing nation. However, the increase in the power of multinational pharmaceutical companies currently infringes on the independency of Korea's pharmaceutical policies. Expensive imported drugs were originally covered by the national health insurance plan, but starting from 1999 such drugs began to be covered by the plan. After separation of medical and pharmaceutical services, the use of expensive drugs was increased, and the Korean government planned to introduce the reference price policy in order to contain the cost of the national health insurance plan. However, due to pressures from the U.S. government as well as multinational pharmaceutical companies, implementation of the policy has been postponed. In addition, due to a pressure from the U.S. government, a working group was created which would affect the health care policy of the Korean government. Discussions so far on globalization was about whether the change into populist competitive nations due to globalization resulted in the reduction of welfare spending. However, this study shows not only the reduction of health care cost through policies to reduce drug manufacturing costs but increase in welfare spending by raising the strengths of multinational pharmaceutical companies that are for-profit providers of welfare service. While focusing on the contradictory effects of globalization on pharmaceutical policies of a nation, this study looked at how these conflicting effects end up promoting the interests of multinational pharmaceutical companies by examining the Korean case.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.116-125
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• 2012

Local pharmaceutical companies in Korea, which have grown focusing on domestic markets, have recently faced difficulties such as market saturation, price control policies and market-opening pressures by FTA. It seems to be an urgent issue for them to export pharmaceuticals to developed countries comprising the greater part of the global pharmaceutical market. Hence, this research was conducted to investigate and benchmark the strategies employed by India industry for the successful access to the global pharmaceutical markets. Drug policies as well as their influences on pharmaceutical market changes between India and Korea for the last 40 years have been searched and the differences have been comparatively analyzed. The pharmaceutical industry of India has the following strengths: low costs; experienced labor pool; excellent reverse-engineering skills; powerful IT; marketing capability; and established distribution network. After 2000, consolidations, M&A and alliances with domestic and multinational companies have been sharply increased in the industry of India. Indian companies unfolding both competition and cooperation with multinational corporations currently move up the value-added chain, and this enthusiastic strategy should be learned by local pharmaceutical companies.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.397-404
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• 2014

The Ministry of Health and Welfare proposed the "undergraduate program specializing in pharmaceutical industry" in 2013, as part of its roadmap to assist domestic pharmaceutical companies to become the top-tier pharma companies in near future and provide skilled personnel tailored for pharmaceutical industry. However, it is not clear whether this "undergraduate program" meets the needs of pharmaceutical industry, especially when the number of pharmacy students increased from 1,200 to 1,700 per year since 2009. The purpose of this paper is to identify which educational background is preferred by pharmaceutical companies, by surveying the CEOs of domestic pharmaceutical companies and referring to recruitment advertisements shown in medical newspapers, specified by the fields within the companies. Two independent reviewers referred to recruitment session in Yakup newspaper and Dailypharm from May 2012 until January 2014, focusing on recruitments from pharmaceutical companies targeting bachelors' degree holders with no prior experience. 749 recruitments were observed during the study period, more than 90% of which were provided by domestic pharmaceutical companies, and regardless of the companies being domestic or multinational, pharmaceutical companies' preference for pharmacists was remarkable (44.3% for domestic and 65.8% for multinational), and the preference was especially high in the fields such as Medical, R&D, Market Access (regulatory affair/pricing and reimbursement), Business Development, and Marketing. Survey results showed that the need of establishing the undergraduate program specializing in pharmaceutical industry is mixed, suggesting that although there is need for the educating personnel targeting pharmaceutical industry, the undergraduate program would not be an answer due to current PEET system. Our study concludes that in the example of pharmaceutical companies' recruitments shown in medical newspapers, pharmaceutical companies prefer pharmacy major in almost all fields of the pharmaceutical companies, yet the pharmaceutical companies still perceive the gap between current bachelor's degree holders(including pharmacy majors) and the ideal personnel required for advancing to the "top-class" pharmaceutical companies.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.182-190
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• 2018

Many pharmaceutical companies operate the SFA system to support salespeople. The SFA system is used for various behaviors of salespeople. However, there is a lack of empirical analysis on the performance of SFA in Korea. The purpose of this study is to investigate the utilization of SFA system and the non - financial performance of SFA system. The subjects of the survey were 347 pharmaceutical community members who consisted of pharmaceutical salespeople and surveyed online for 18 days from March 13, 2018 to April 30, 2018. and the effective response rate was 23.1% (80/347). The analysis shows that the higher the level of SFA system utilization, the higher the non - financial performance. By type of company, the utilization level of multinational companies was higher than that of domestic companies. Among the SFA utilization level items, 1.47 points (3.65, 2.18) were higher than the domestic companies in terms of the support service items. Among the SFA performance items, foreign companies were 1.47 points (3.16, 1.69) Respectively. This suggests that the SFA development and operation method of the domestic company focuses on the management service rather than the support service for the salesperson and the customer satisfaction. Through this study, it is considered that domestic companies should strengthen sales person support and customer satisfaction information providing function when operating SFA system.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.146-153
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• 2018

Objective: Multi-regional clinical trials have been widely used for accelerating global drug development by multinational pharmaceutical companies. In this study, we aimed to review and analyze the international trends in regulations and guidelines on multi-regional clinical trials by regulatory authorities and international organizations, such as International Conference on Harmonisation, for referring to policies, including development of domestic guidelines for multi-regional clinical trials. Methods: The policies, regulations, and guidelines published by the US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (Japan), and China Food and Drug Administration were searched, and the International Conference on Harmonisation E17 draft guideline was reviewed. Results: The regulatory authorities in developed countries have developed and implemented regulations and guidelines on multi-regional clinical trials to promote simultaneous global drug development and evaluate the regional differences in drug safety and efficacy. International Conference on Harmonisation developed the draft guideline for planning/designing of multi-regional clinical trials in 2016, which recommends the general principles for strategy-related issues and design of multi-regional clinical trials, and for protocol-related issues, such as consideration of regional variability, subject selection, dose selection, endpoints, comparators, overall sample size, allocation to regions, collecting information on efficacy and safety, and statistical analysis. Conclusion: It is important to understand the international regulatory requirements for designing and planning of multi-regional clinical trials for global drug development. Moreover, it is necessary to prepare multi-regional clinical trial guidelines in accordance with the Korean regulation for clinical trials and drug administration.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.64-86
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• 2010

Korea has had problems with the price and supply of essential drugs such as Gleevec for leukemia, Fuzeon for HIV/AIDS, and Tamiflu for both avian flu and swine flu. The shortage or refusal of patented drugs supply is imposing a heavy burden in not only developing countries but also developed countries. Thinking over the serious results, we need to concern about the limited access to patented drugs by multinational drug companies' patent monopoly especially for pandemic and life threatening diseases. The effective response regarding to pandemic and life threatening diseases. The effective response regarding to pandemic situation requests collaborative and unbiased provisions of all countries in the world, however, sometimes patent monopoly may hinder the efforts. Compulsory licensing has been considered to be a useful alternative to the abuse of patent rights. However, the Korean experiences of compulsory licensing have left some controversial issues in connection with the availability of it in Korea. 'Flexibility' allowed in TRIPS and Doha Declaration has not come into effect in Korea for several reasons. Although the situation shows the limitations of compulsory licensing as a pharmaceutical supply policy, it is clear that compulsory licensing still has the possibilities of enhancing the access to medicines of all countries in need. Through searching the institutionalization process and experiments of compulsory licensing in Korea, this article explores the possibilities and the limits.