A few weeks ago, my colleague Linda wrote a blog entry about how difficult it is for her to imagine what pre-Internet public relations would have been like. After going through the exercise of building an international media list for the launch of the Touch Bionics i-LIMB Hand, I can’t imagine how such a list could have been compiled in any reasonable period of time without the help of Google and the ability to access online content from print and broadcast media outlets. Notice, I don’t mention any branded media contact database as my savior. That’s because we don’t rely on them.
I’m willing to bet that more than a few PR firms, or at least their newly hired interns, would think we’re crazy for not using one of the available media databases to grab all seemingly relevant contacts, export email address and blast out news releases.
John German, one of the first patients to receive the revolutionary new prosthetic hand, the i-LIMB, that inmedia helped launch in July has posted an endearing video to YouTube detailing the amazing array of uses to which he puts his bionic hand on an everyday basis. He gets a bit carried away, taking a Lee Majors-like leap over a running car, but the biggest impression I was left with was just how easily John has integrated the arm into his life.
There has been a trend emerging in recent years of pharmaceutical companies creating generic versions of successful off-patent drugs as a method of speeding the laborious, expensive and time consuming clinical and regulatory requirements of bringing a drug to market. When generic drugs hit the market, typically between seven and 12 years after the brand name drug was made generally available and the 20-year patent protection has ended, the cost for both the generic and the brand name drug decrease because of the increased competition. However, the results of a study by Canada’s Competition Bureau show that Canadians could be paying less for these drugs than they currently are. The rebates that generic providers are giving to pharmacies as incentive to stock their products are not being passed along to the consumer. The full study, which explains why these benefits are not reaching the consumer and suggests possible solutions, is available on the Competition Bureau’s web site.
