Pharma

GSK’s Deirdre Connelly dips toe into blogosphere. Will she take the plunge?

A biotechnology executive confessed to me this week an interest in blogging. More than talking […]

A biotechnology executive confessed to me this week an interest in blogging. More than talking about his company, he has thoughts and ideas he’d like to share about the broader life sciences industry. Sounds great. I’d read that, I told him. So what’s stopping him? He nodded in the direction of his investor and corporate communications director. “She won’t let me,” he said.

All sorts of pitfalls face a life sciences executive who blogs. Obviously a company can’t disclose competitive information. Publicly traded companies have to be careful about what they disclose and when they disclose it, lest they run afoul of securities regulators. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be sure to jump on any inappropriate marketing or healthcare claims a company makes. But look who’s blogging now. It’s GlaxoSmithKline’s (NYSE:GSK) top North American executive, Deirdre Connelly.

Connelly posted this morning on the company’s “More Than Medicine” blog, referencing her speech this week at the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia. Connelly talked mostly about values — how the company is changing its business culture to reflect the higher standards that society expects of healthcare companies. Here’s an excerpt of what she said this week in Philly:

 “In a Harris survey, only 11% of people said the pharmaceutical industry is generally honest and trustworthy.What explains this disconnect? The answer, I believe, is that in some ways our industry lost its way and failed to fully appreciate the evolving expectations of our society.

Yes, in the ’90s and the early 2000s, the industry worked with its customers in ways that are common in many industries in which business-to-business selling takes place. We took customers on trips, like many industries, and our customers enjoyed that. Yes, we did bring pads, pens, textbooks, medical models and other items to customers’ offices. And, like in many industries, those “gifts” were appreciated.

This business model may still be OK for other industries, but we do not sell chocolates or cars. We bring life-altering and life-saving medicines to patients. Society holds our interactions with our customers to a higher standard. And it should. Society expects our business to be conducted openly and transparently, and in a way that does not create even a perception of inappropriate influence.”

If you think you’ve heard this before, maybe you have. That text, and large segments of the Philly speech, were part of an address Connelly gave last year in Washington, D.C. to the Pharmaceutical Industry Compliance Congress. I’m not suggesting Connelly plagiarized herself. It’s not unheard of for public speakers to use a speech more than once or repurpose previous comments for another presentation. But in the blogosphere, readers are looking for new and original stuff.

Kudos to Connelly for blogging. I hope she’ll blog more. But I also hope she’ll bring more insight into the thoughts and ideas she has for her company and for healthcare. True, she’ll bump up against some of the very obstacles that the biotech executive I talked to earlier this week faces. But to her credit, she’s taken a step. Let’s see if she’ll take the plunge.

[Image from stock.xchng user svilen001]

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