Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Frequency of doctor visits by Medical Representatives

I am aware that this post is a little beyond the scope of this blog but still wanted to write this since it is quite interesting.

The top 10 pharmaceutical companies whose sales reps visited doctors frequently in Korea in June are as follows:

Drugmakers.............................Visits
1. Hanmi………………....…...35,689
2. Daewoong…………...….…33,777
3. Dong-A………………..……23,980
4. Yuhan…………………..…..22,459
5. SK Chemicals……………..21,119
6. Chong Kun Dang………….18,762
7. Ildong……………………….17,929
8. GlaxoSmithKline Korea……17,288
9. CJ…………………………...16,611
10. Pfizer Korea………………15,771

Just analyzed the performance of Hanmi here. Hanmi has products for 12 different therapeutic areas ranging from Cardiovascular to Urology. The number of doctors in Korea is nearly 82000 (as of 2007 per some statistics). The numbers above are the no. of visits and not really the number of doctors visited. Suppose there were two visits to the same doctor in June, Hanmi manages to have visited 17845 doctors which is still a higher figure than the *total number of visits* a few companies in the list have achieved.

Too many visits by reps from the same company.. hmm.. does that annoy the doctors ?

Surprisingly, the answer is NO!

In another survey conducted, the doctors answered that Hanmi is the most trustable drugmaker with the kindest sales representatives, the best detailing, and social responsibility activity.

The Most Trustable domestic Drugmaker
1. Hanmi…….…..........18%
2. Yuhan………...........15%
3. Dong-A……..............9%
4. Daewoong…........….7%
5. Choong wae………..5%

I have no details on the survey methodologies or the conflict of interest and so can't really comment on the statistics. (One thing I know is that the latter data has come from a smaller group of doctors (n = 200) who recently began to run business) But from the data available it seems that the strategy that Hanmi follows seems to be working out really well for them.

Any Indian company (or any other company) has followed this and got such results? I am really curious to find out. Anticipate a post on this soon.