The PM Society, a leading organisation for marketing in the life science industries, has appointed David Southern as leader of its NHS Partnerships Interest Group.

Southern, the Director of Pathway Communications, has experience of working both with NHS organisations to redesign services and with pharmaceutical companies to develop their NHS strategy.

He replaces Ivor Eisenstadt, who has retired from the voluntary position in order to focus on his business, the publisher MGP Ltd, and on working with CCG Patient Participation Groups.

The PM Society’s NHS Partnerships Interest Group is concerned with promoting and enhancing joint working partnerships between the pharmaceutical industry and the newly deregulated NHS.

Southern commented that the group “has been extremely active from the outset in sharing understanding of how industry can work with the NHS in this new era.

“Standalone events for members and a presence at key meetings have enabled both doctors, commissioners and industry representatives to share best practice, inform and educate,” he added. “I am looking forward to progressing opportunities such as this to promote excellence in NHS joint working.”

Pathway Communications, which Southern founded in 2008, has worked with hospital and primary care trusts to develop and implement new clinical services.

Before that, he worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 15 years, helping companies to develop their NHS strategy, define their healthcare offering and model patient pathways.

The PM Society NHS Partnerships Interest Group was formed in 2012 to support joint working by sharing experience and good practice, and by offering practical support to developing partnership projects.

The PM Society is a not-for-profit organisation with members from over 230 life science companies.

The days when pharmaceutical representatives arrived with a simple printed paper aid is thankfully long gone. Morten Hjelmsoe explains how the latest technology is helping to develop the customer-client relationship like never before.

This is an important moment for pharmaceutical sales professionals. Right now technologies are being implemented that will shape how the technology sector relates to healthcare professionals for years to come. These technologies matter because, if they are applied correctly, the sector can free itself to communicate in new ways and rebuild the industry’s relationship with healthcare professionals.

It’s a sad fact that medical professionals often see little value in technological communications. Representatives now have only a few minutes or perhaps seconds to communicate and, in some countries, are prevented from seeing medical professionals altogether. Where contact is maintained, this is often driven more by sampling than the exchange of information. If current trends continue, then direct access to medical professionals may fade away altogether.

The problem is that the information that sales representatives are being asked to deliver simply cannot be relevant enough. Every medical professional has a certain level of knowledge on a topic and a particular set of needs and concerns. It’s hard, if not impossible, to respond through traditional ‘campaign’ communication.

For example, a certain doctor might be particularly concerned about the safety of a new brand. So until that is satisfactorily covered there’s little point in discussing its speed of action. Yet this may be precisely what the representative is asked to do as a new campaign kicks in.

The representative knows this but cannot react to the doctor’s needs. And, as we all know, when something isn’t relevant to the audience it won’t receive much attention. So no matter how skilled the sales representative is, the lack of relevance creates a barrier that is hard to overcome. The good news is that technology now makes it possible to eliminate these potential barriers by not establishing them in the first place.

Push to pull

The introduction of new technologies enables us to think differently about communication. While closed loop marketing is the terminology often used, I actually prefer to use the term ‘pull marketing’ or ‘pull communication’. It’s not a big deal but it more clearly demonstrates the difference from traditional ‘push’ forms of customer communication. Put bluntly, the difference is:

• A push communication is what I want you to know

• A pull communication is understanding what you need to know and then providing that

Traditionally, technology has concentrated on push communication. I like to think of this as acting like train drivers. There’s a destination in mind for healthcare professionals and so tracks are built to transport them there. Of course, this means that everyone has to travel together and at the same speed.

Pull communication requires that we act more like taxi drivers. Here the job is to react to people’s individual needs and work out the best route for them. Asking, “Where do you need to go?” is fundamentally different from asking, “Do you want to go here?” It is also more likely to get a positive response.

Paper Thin

Through its sales force the pharmaceutical industry has a unique and precious contact with its customers. In fact, it’s hard to think of another industry that has these advantages. Yet technology has actually prevented pharma from making the most of this.

Pull communication wasn’t possible in a paper world. We simply couldn’t keep track of what each physician needed to know – or where they needed to go. There’s currently thousands of GPs, each needing slightly different pieces of information. It’s impossible! Unfortunately there would be one printed detail aid and that would have to work for everyone. And that’s the way it stayed until information technology advanced enough.

Look at it this way; each day, sales representatives go out loaded full of information. They deliver these messages but they return home empty. Or so it appears. In reality, sales representatives will have learned a great deal but this information couldn’t be transferred. The problem was that the technology in place lacked a way to collect insight and collate this in such a way that it became actionable information. Now everything’s changed.

The future

We already have the technology that allows doctors to choose the information that they are interested in. During a discussion with a company representative for example, medical professionals can actively pull the information they want, which ensures they don’t talk past each other.

Technology can also help sales representatives gather this feedback. Intelligent communication systems, which fit naturally with normal workflows, record each medical professional’s particular interests as they interact with the systems.

Suddenly, sales professionals no longer appear to come home ‘empty’. Now it’s clear that they are active gatherers of information who refuel at each appointment to collect insights that drive future communication. And it continues this way – continually developing a better customer understanding that powers the provision of high value information.

While technology has the potential to reinvigorate relationship with healthcare professionals and key customers on its own it is not enough. New technology calls for a new strategy: pull communication. If we simply add technology, we’ll only get more efficient push communication – the one-way, mass messaging route that has sales reps replicating train drivers. And that will only accelerate problems.

If you recognise there is an underlying problem, in the fact that healthcare professionals feel over-exposed to non-relevant messages and increasingly close themselves off from the industry, then how can increasing the efficiency of communication change the situation? More contacts made more easily? It’s like trying to treat side-effects by increasing the dose. I fail to see how that can work.

So instead of just seeking greater efficiency, I would argue that we should take the opportunity that technology offers to fundamentally change what we’re doing.

Choose freedom

When technology is allied to a pull strategy representatives are freed from acting as a mass communications channel and can become true communicators, providing personal service. If we embrace the opportunities of technology and raise our expectations of what it can provide, we can enter new era of personalised communication and service delivery.

This is what sales teams have been asking for. They know their customers best and can now create, not just local, but individual strategies. This means that they can get measured on their ability to educate and not simply deliver messages. Whether it is through face-to-face meetings, group workshops or online discussions, it’s the ability to meet needs and actually change behaviour that really counts.

This is a huge opportunity for the industry. In the hands of company representatives, pull marketing technology starts to create a virtuous circle: bringing customers real value, with representatives generating better relationships and gaining more meaningful access which allows them to deliver more value, and so on.

This can have a dramatic effect on the relationships between pharmaceutical sales and medical professionals. The more value that is brought to the table, the more valuable pharma reps become. If the technology is applied in the right way pharma can restore the traditional position as a treatment partner. Who knows, perhaps there will come a day when the value of what sales professionals can offer is so great that healthcare professionals actually pay for a visit from a company representative? It’s not impossible. What’s certain is that there are exciting times ahead. It’s time to turn the tables.

Morten Hjelmsoe is founder and CEO of Agnitio A/S – the provider of the leading pull marketing software platform for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Agnitio’s system is already implemented in more than 45 countries and 25 languages – and used by major pharmaceutical and medical device companies globally. www.agnitio.com.

In the new Pf, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt answers some questions from our readers. Maxine Vaccine delivers a brief audit report on his answers.

The most vital thing to remember about Jeremy Hunt is that he’s not Andrew Lansley. The older man spent nine years dreaming up a transformation of the NHS into a competitive healthcare market system, then claimed he’d had to invent it out of thin air when, as part of the new coalition government, he “saw the books” (which he’d had full access to for nine years) for the first time. Then he drove through legislation designed to break up the NHS and place its fragments on the bargain shelf of global corporate business, and mocked anyone who questioned it. Forced into a cosmetic display of ‘consultation’, he followed it up by declaring that the ‘listening period’ had been needed only to educate the ignorant doctors.

And suddenly, the Tories are faced with the prospect of losing power. Journalists are calling the Health and Social Care Act ‘Cameron’s poll tax’. Cue the new Department of Health. Exit the sneering headmaster and enter the elegantly half-smiling head boy. Who doesn’t half scrub up well, and – unlike Lansley – can say “the NHS is one of our greatest assets” without crossing his fingers behind his back. Jeremy Hunt was a contributor to Direct Democracy (2005), a Conservative Party activist guide that claimed the NHS was “no longer relevant” to modern society because it was a public sector health system. But he can say “the NHS is one of our greatest assets” because he can say anything. Lansley is a Thatcher type of politician, whereas Hunt is a Blair type.

His answers to the Pf questions are classic examples of why he has been drafted in to front NHS reform up to the next General Election, or at least part-way there. He never says the wrong thing. If he can’t say the right thing, he says nothing in a nice way. He makes you feel that anyone who disagrees with him must be insane. It’s only when you compare his words with what is actually going on that things get complicated – and you realise that, as a new lease-holder in the house that Lansley built, he has only unpacked the suitcases for two rooms: the front room and the bathroom. The rest of the house is unoccupied.

Regular Pf contributor Omar Ali asked Hunt a question about NHS rationing: how will making patients pay for services be integrated into the wider healthcare bill implementation? A good question, as this is already happening: patients in many areas are being told they cannot have cataract operations, varicose vein surgery or hip/knee replacements unless either (a) they wait until their need is greater (for example, they can have cataract surgery once they are blind) or (b) they go private. Referral management, which Sir David Nicholson is very keen on, is another form of rationing: if patients want to see a specialist in many situations, they have to go private. Hunt’s response is worth quoting in full:

Let me be absolutely clear on this – the NHS will always be free at the point of delivery and no one will be asked to pay for its services. Yes, in the future, services will be provided differently – public health services will be organised by local authorities, for example – but the founding principle of those NHS services being free, for those who need it, will never change.

Hunt is neatly splitting the hair of Omar Ali’s question. If people are paying for services they are not NHS services, they are private. But money will still be changing hands for services that used to be free. They just won’t be NHS services any more. And that “for those who need it” is significant. It has two aspects: severity of clinical need (already a moveable famine) and ability to pay (Direct Democracy suggests the NHS should become a means-tested state reimbursement of private healthcare fees). Who needs free healthcare, and what free healthcare they need, will be critical issues from now on – and legally, the Health Secretary now has no remit to influence those decisions, which will be made by autonomous CCGs and/or the autonomous Commissioning Board.

Pf reader Susan Ranch asked whether the Government’s recent announcement that it will cap individual payments for social care at twice the Dilnot-recommended level means that more NHS funding will be committed for elderly patients. Hunt replied: This is incorrect. The Government has not said this and no decision has been made. Strictly speaking, he is right. According to the BBC and three Tory-loyal newspapers (the Sunday Times, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express), journalists were briefed that setting the social care payment cap at £75k (whereas Dilnot had recommended £35k) would feature in the Government’s mid-term review. But it did not – and the critical backlash from social and healthcare experts was either unnecessary or effective, depending on your interpretation. Whatever its level, the cap appears unlikely to be implemented before the 2015 election.

Hunt went on to say: I want this country to become one of the best places in Europe to grow old and make sure people can live independent and healthier lives into old age. Which is the kind of gold-plated soundbite Lansley never delivered.

Another Pf reader, Leigh Saunders, asked how the pharmaceutical industry could work with the NHS to improve cancer survival rates. Hunt replied: The pharmaceutical industry already plays a vital role in improving the health of people with cancer. I want to improve mortality rates, where the targeting and development of medicines is becoming ever more important. I am sure the pharmaceutical industry will want to build on its work in this area and help improve cancer care.

Great stuff: that flatters the industry, expresses a decent medical aim, and then flatters the industry again. It doesn’t answer the question, but who cares?

Jeremy Hunt’s management of the Pf questions is a masterclass in accessible spin. It tells us almost nothing about Government policy, but it tells us why Hunt currently holds the lease on the house of NHS reform. He knows how to make it look good – and in politics, that’s not always easy. The pharma industry should recognise Hunt’s talents as those of marketing and sales. He’s one of us.

Maxine’s views and attitude are not necessarily those of Pf.

The ABPI and the Pharmaceutical Marketing (PM) Society have formally agreed to work together in promoting and advancing the UK pharmaceutical industry.

The two organisations have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) committing them to align activities that are relevant to their shared interests.

Areas of joint working suggested by the MoU include training, events and member surveys to identify issues and facilitate planning in the industry.

The PM Society promotes marketing excellence in the healthcare industry. Run by volunteers as a non-profit organisation, it has members in 230 UK companies.

In 2012 the PM Society introduced a number of Interest Groups focused on current challenges: market access, digital marketing, NHS partnerships, patient engagement and personal development.

The ABPI represents research-based biopharmaceutical companies in the UK, and is recognised by the Government as the body negotiating on behalf of the branded pharmaceutical industry.

“The PM Society reaches out to the operational heart of the UK pharmaceutical and life sciences industries and is a natural partner to promote debate and discussion with the people we serve,” said ABPI Chief Executive Stephen Whitehead.

“The working groups in market access, NHS partnerships and patient engagement, aligned as they are with many of our strategic imperatives, offer particular potential for joint working.”

Neil Copping (pictured), Chairman of the PM Society, commented: “Since we redefined the Society early last year, we have looked to address members’ needs more effectively in the rapidly changing healthcare environment.

“Aligning strategic and grass roots level activities by joining forces with the ABPI, we aim to open new doors and deliver increased value and benefit to both organisations’ membership.

“It will also avoid duplication on initiatives that are relevant industry-wide and might otherwise have been under discussion by both organisations.”

Johnson & Johnson has been fined $1.2bn by an Arkansas circuit court for fraudulent marketing of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal (risperidone).

The judge said the company and its US subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals had lied about the drug’s benefits and risks in order to obtain Medicare reimbursement.

The fine is among the largest ever imposed in a US state fraud case involving a drug company.

J&J, which denies any improper conduct or actual harm, is calling for a retrial.

The judge, Tim Fox, fined the companies $1.19bn for nearly 240,000 violations of the state’s Medicaid fraud law and $11m for violations of its law on deceptive practices.

To date, 11 states have prosecuted J&J over its marketing of Risperdal, which is approved as a treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults and behaviour problems in young people.

Prosecutors have claimed that J&J inaccurately stated Risperdal to be more effective than generic alternatives, while concealing the increased risks of diabetes, stroke and weight gain associated with the drug.

Since reimbursement for Risperdal was available through the state-funded Medicaid system, J&J is accused of defrauding state authorities.

Arkansas attorney general Dustin McDaniel commented that the court’s verdict “sends a clear signal that big drug companies like Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals cannot lie to the FDA, patients and doctors in order to defraud Arkansas taxpayers”.

The fine was based on minimum penalties for each individual violation of state law through a prescription or marketing message – coming in this case to over 250,000 violations.

Janssen spokeswoman Teresa Mueller said the company would call for a retrial and, if that was denied, would appeal against the state verdict.

The court “did not show any Arkansas patient was ever harmed by using Risperdal” or “that any Arkansas physician or Arkansas Medicaid was ever misled by the drug’s label or package insert,” she asserted.

In the last year, J&J has reached a $158m settlement with Texas over the marketing of Risperdal and been fined $327m by South Carolina.

At the federal level, the company is in talks with the Justice Department to settle a misdemeanour criminal charge. However, the JoD has rejected a $1bn offer from J&J to settle all outstanding civil charges.

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $158 million to settle a US lawsuit brought by the state of Texas, alleging that it promoted off-label use of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal (risperidone) and misled doctors about its risks.

Witnesses stated that J&J officials concealed data indicating the drug posed a high risk of weight gain and type 2 diabetes, and that it instructed its sales force to promote the drug’s off-label prescription for minors.

The settlement is the latest chapter in the ongoing dispute over J&J’s marketing of Risperdal in the USA (for more details, click here).

The state of Texas had originally sought $579 million in damages, but the company’s payment is reported to settle the dispute – though several other states, including most recently Massachusetts, intend similar lawsuits.

In the Texas court hearing, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen said that a clinical trial, Study 113, found that about half of people given Risperdal developed diabetes after a year of therapy. In 2000, when the FDA investigated potential links between antipsychotics and diabetes risk, J&J did not provide the results of Study 113 and two related studies.

Earlier in the trial, the court saw an internal memo instructing J&J’s sales representatives to “flood clinics with Risperdal stuff” as part of a 2004 campaign to increase off-label prescriptions for the drug in children and adolescents.

In his final ruling, Judge Roger Couch said of the Study 113 data: “It is apparent to this court that this information was not disclosed because it did not fit the marketing department’s vision for the promotion and marketing of this drug.”

Merck & Co (trading in Europe as MSD) has agreed to pay almost a billion dollars to settle criminal and civil claims relating to its US promotion of the arthritis drug Vioxx.

The total of $950m covers all outstanding cases in the US relating to the drug’s off-label marketing and alleged false statements regarding its safety.

Ironically, Merck’s anti-inflammatory drug has perhaps inflamed more legal trouble than any drug in recent history.

Launched in 1999, Vioxx (rofecoxib) was used worldwide for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Merck withdrew it from the global market in 2004, responding to evidence that it increased the risk of blood clotting and other serious cardiovascular events.

However, as early as September 2001, the FDA had sent Merck a Warning Letter directing the company to cease publishing marketing materials which it judged to be “false, lacking in fair balance, or otherwise misleading”.

The criminal charges against Merck in the USA relate to its promotion of Vioxx as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis for three years without FDA approval. The drug was finally approved by them in that indication in 2002.

The civil charges in the USA have taken the form of thousands of private lawsuits by patients or their relatives, claiming that Merck marketed the drug in an off-label indication and/or that it made false statements to Medicaid regarding the drug’s risks.

Class actions on behalf of thousands of patients have been launched in the UK and Australia.

Merck made approximately $11bn in global revenue from Vioxx, but stands to lose most of that. The company has already paid $4.85bn to settle individual lawsuits and almost $2bn in legal costs.

Under the terms of a plea agreement with the US Department of Justice, Merck will plead guilty to a single misdemeanour for its promotion of Vioxx in the US between 199 and 2002, paying a $322m fine.

The company will settle all US civil claims with a $628m payment that covers both the off-label marketing and the claims of misleading statements. Of this payment, two-thirds will be recovered by the US Government and the rest by Medicaid.

Merck & Co commented that the civil settlement did not constitute any admission of liability or wrongdoing at the corporate level: “As part of the plea agreement, the US acknowledged that there was no basis for a finding of high-level management participation in the violation.”

The case reflects the issues facing global pharma companies concerning potential breaches of regulations by executives at lower levels.

The most dramatic allegation regarding Vioxx has come from Australia, where a court heard in 2009 that doctors had received a bogus ‘clinical research journal’ containing pro-Vioxx articles credited to non-existent doctors and written by Merck’s marketing team.

Keen-eyed pharma blogger Maxine Vaccine makes her Pf debut with a look at a classic instance of creative branding.

One of the classic literary studies of marketing is ‘The Lame and the Halt’, written by American journalist Ellis Parker Butler just over a century ago. His character ‘Perkins the Great’ is a brilliant entrepreneur from whose methods we can still learn much about the commercial side of pharma innovation.

The story begins with Perkins and the narrator, his business partner, discussing the possibilities of spring water from an obscure rural district known to the locals as ‘Skunk Swamp’. Perkins describes the product as “sulphur water with a touch of garlic”. His first idea is to sell it as an oral medication for rheumatism.

With the economy of the born marketer, he explains why rheumatism is the ideal target market: “It is prevalent.” He already has the core idea for his marketing campaign: the product will be sold through advertisements across the USA with the catch-phrase Perkins pays the freight.

The real breakthrough comes with his realisation that the product will meet with too much customer resistance as an oral medication. But if customers are advised to bathe in it, not only will they not have to taste it, but they will need to buy more of it. With this application of customer insight, a winning brand is born.

Perkins and the narrator set up a factory on the edge of Skunk Swamp, and are going into business when Perkins has another idea. To add value to the customer service, they can invite customers to save the labels from the massive bottles of spring water – and for every six labels they send back, they will receive the deeds to an acre of the land the water came from.

They target ‘rheumatism districts’ across the USA with a poster and magazine ad campaign – to great effect.

Things get complicated when the Grand Rapids Rheumatic Club of Chicago turn up outside the factory to inspect their “real estate holdings”. Perkins and his business partner make a strategic exit from the market by catching the first train out of town.

Needless to say, this story is a gentle satire on advertising in the days before the FDA. Nothing like that could happen now. Imaginative branding has to be built on the solid foundation of a product whose efficacy is beyond doubt.

But the way in which Perkins innovates his commercial offering – first by introducing a brand-defining procurement concept, then by modifying the product’s application to improve customer targeting, and finally by rewarding customer loyalty with a unique extra benefit – deserves our admiration.

And so does his nerve.

New research shows that SME growth provides the best prospect for economic recovery in the UK. But, as private equity firm ECI notes, finding the cash to reach out to global partners and markets can be a critical hurdle.

With continued pressure on governments across the Western world to reduce their expenditure, together with sustained macro-economic uncertainty and a tightening of bank funding, times are not necessarily easy for the average healthcare company – which often relies on the public purse for reimbursement and debt funding for growth. One might therefore expect the short-term outlook for growth to be somewhat muted, despite the backdrop of positive longer-term demographic drivers of demand.

Hence it is interesting that a recent survey of UK SME businesses by ECI Partners, a UK-based midmarket private equity firm, has found executives to be generally positive about growth prospects over the next 12 months, with 74% of respondents anticipating headcount growth and 60% expecting double-digit turnover growth.

The results met with a warm response from the Government, with Mark Prisk, Minister of State for Business and Enterprise, saying: “It’s good news that despite a tough few months, nearly three-quarters of the SMEs surveyed by ECI are looking to recruit over the next year and half expect to see substantial profit growth in that period. Up and down the country, it is Britain’s SMEs that are driving our economic recovery.”

Reaching out

This year, the survey conducted each summer by ECI Partners gained responses from a total of 246 chief executives from UK growth companies from a range of sectors with turnover between £10m and £200m. The results paint a positive picture against the gloomy economic backdrop of the Eurozone crisis and sluggish UK economy, and suggest that there remains growth potential amongst SME businesses – which account for around a third of UK private sector employment.

Steve Tudge, a Managing Director of ECI, commented: “Despite the barriers to growth, which are principally cited as a weaker macro-environment and funding constraints, we continue to be optimistic about the prospects for good mid-market companies.”

Executives see the key growth drivers to be increasing international sales – with Europe and the USA remaining the dominant international markets, though India and China are becoming more important – and organic growth through investment in sales and marketing and new product development. Over 40% of companies are also planning to increase their use of overseas suppliers to improve their margins.

Internal cash flows are viewed as the most likely source of funding for this growth, though around half of respondents say they are likely to seek bank debt within the next 12 months (despite continued complaints about its cost and due diligence requirements) and around 40% are also likely to look at private equity backing. Fewer than 10% of companies see the public markets as accessible, perhaps reflecting the recent volatility and liquidity issues associated with the AIM market.

Healthcare respondents are less bullish about high growth than their peers in other sectors, and are noticeably less positive about growth than they were last year. This no doubt reflects, in part, the political uncertainty surrounding the current UK healthcare reforms and the public sector spending constraints that are impacting on the health and social care sectors.

Despite this, companies remain more confident of raising growth financing – and of raising it from private equity firms, with over 50% saying that was a likely consideration over the next year.

Financing growth

What does all this mean for SME healthcare businesses in the UK? The sector certainly faces challenges in responding to Government spending cuts, which are tending to put pressure on margins if not always on volumes.

However, opportunities for growth remain amidst these challenges, particularly for companies who are able and willing to venture beyond the UK in order to seek new customers and cheaper suppliers.

Of course, this internationalisation can put a strain on smaller businesses, which may lack the scale to fully support an international infrastructure. Private equity groups with experience and expertise in this process can potentially offer support to management teams in this position – whether by making introductions, sharing best practice or simply financing the required infrastructure.

There are significant sums of capital available for investment from the UK private equity industry, and there remains an appetite to invest in market-leading healthcare businesses. Thus private equity should be considered seriously as an option by management teams in the healthcare industry who are looking to fund growth to help their companies succeed in the current economic environment.

ECI is a private equity group that has been investing in mid-market growth businesses for over 35 years. It invests across sectors, with a focus on UK and Irish companies. Healthcare companies in its current portfolio include a primary care provider (Harmoni), assisted living specialists (Premier Bathrooms, DLP) and medical software companies (Clinisys, Ascribe).

Between 1,000 and 1,500 jobs are expected to be lost at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries as part of the company’s cost-cutting measures.

Reports from Israel claim the majority of the layoffs will be made in the US and Europe and mainly focused in Teva’s recently acquired Cephalon’s generic business.

The reports say that Teva is hoping to raise $500 million in synergies from its takeover with job losses expected to raise the majority of its target.

Teva has already said it is planning to cut sales, marketing and administrative expenses by $300 million, R&D by between $120 million and $150 million, and production costs by $50 million to $80 million. R&D savings would be achieved by cutting duplicate operations, the company said.

Teva has a history of job losses following takeovers of generic companies. In 2008 it bought US generic specialist Barr and reduced its workforce by 10%, reports say.

A reduction of 1,000 jobs at Cephalon would represent a loss of 27% roles before the takeover. But one company where job losses will be made, the reports say, is at Mepha, the Swiss generics manufacturer Cephalon bought last year. The company had 620 jobs prior to the acquisition.