Understanding a decision

Important news came on Friday to those working in the pharmaceutical industry in Canada. After the drastic price reduction of generic drugs in Ontario, the Quebec government announced that those prices would also be in effect here.

 

The government expects to save about 164 million yearly and Quebec residents can expect to pay less for their generic drugs. Due to competition, even innovator drugs that have a generic counterpart might see a price drop. This is significant change and is something that seems beneficial to the citizen.

 

From the generic industry’s point of view, however, this is catastrophic. The reduction in the profit margins will be substantial and, frankly, jobs are in danger. I’m part of that industry and I wondered what this meant and how much of an impact that would have on Quebec’s society. Even though most drugs sold are generics, the industry itself accounted for 23 percent of all of the biopharmaceutical industry’s workers. Even though the recent recession probably increased its weight, the fact remains that it was not central to the sector in the province. In fact, the strengthening of the innovator industry against the generics has been key to the development of the strong biopharmaceutical growth in Montreal. At this point, I also want to point out that this strategy meant that qualified people would be retained or come to the Montreal region and that in turn, this would mean that the area would become a prime pool of workers for the generic industry. The end result made Montreal a strong innovator and generic pole. The focus of the provincial government, however, was innovators.

 

With this in mind, we need to go back to March 2010 and the much talked-about Bachand budget. The budget, asking for sacrifices from the general population was, in the early days, very unpopular. Even if the government announced in it that they would do all the heavy lifting, people did not believe them. In the meantime, Ontario was announcing that they would slash the prices of their generic drugs, something much better received by the population. The Liberal government here saw this as an opportunity. It could cut from an obscure and relatively small industry, something that would not have strong repercussions.

 

So we are here. The government saving money and gaining political sympathy at the expense of the generic’s industry. Politically, this seems to be a good move and, as I said before, as a citizen, it means that it’ll cost less to buy drugs (whether it is through taxes or through private insurance). Economically however, I’ll direct you to this Fraser Institute article saying how the price setting done by the Ontario government might have been the problem in the first place, a problem that still remains.

Re-blogging: Homelessness with cameras

A while ago, I posted about the idea of giving cell phones to homeless people. This was following an article about a homeless person snapping a picture of the American First Lady. Well, this week, Change.org posted another article about the subject, looking at what happened in the media after the “incident”.

 

The full story here.

The imperial wisdom of crowds

Earlier today, I received an invite to try a website called Empire Avenue. Similarly to foursquare, it blends entertainment and social media.

 

 

What links it to the title of this post however is the format: It’s a stock market. The book Wisdom of Crowds had a whole chapter on decision markets, talking about the well know stock exchanges (like the Nasdaq) or virtual exchanges like the Hollywood Stock Exchange.

Aside from their value in letting people exchange real or digital commodities they were also extremely useful. Indeed, before the Oscars it was child play to find out who the winners would be simply by looking at the prices at HSX (and yes, it worked even for the so-called upsets).

Coming back the Empire Avenue, it’s a virtual exchange like HSX, only this time, instead of movie stars you trade your online friends. As you gain online influence, your price goes up. The influence in this case is linked to how often people hear about you on the web (twitter, facebook, blog) or how many shares people buy within the game. So far, the community is small and the value, to me at least, is purely entertainment. However, as it grows, the pool of user will hopefully get diverse enough to let us put a real price on the popularity of a particular online entity, whether it be a brand website or a politician.

Speaking of politics, I can see many ways a person could use such a system to engage his constituents and mobilize them for campaigns or the like while getting to know which of the opponents should be feared. At any rate, I started playing with it today, and, if it gets interesting, I’ll keep posting about it. If you feel like you want to try it, they gave me a few invites so you can try e-mailing me and I’ll send you one if I have any left.

Privacy

With Facebook’s move to take over the internet and Google’s taking information from unsecure wi-fi networks, privacy has been in the news quite often lately. It seems that we are moving towards a world where privacy is greatly threatened (Yes, it’s a “Cracked” link).

That may be true that our current definition of privacy is coming to an end. I think it’s impossible for someone in my generation to go to a party and not have every single one of your friends know about it. The truth is that we are making choices that are leading us into a world that is more integrated, where information is readily available but where privacy is diminished. It seems as if we must make a choice between this greater access to data and the ability to keep our secrets.

However, it is our choice on where the boundaries are and we can control on how our data is going to get used.

I’m not taking a stance on what would be better here, but simply stating that we have a choice.

Bringing innovation to the masses

We’ve all seen the jokes on the internet about how much technology would cost you in the past. Obviously, the more powerful devices are getting cheaper as time goes by. A very powerful personal computer could still cost you around $5000, it would just be much faster than what that money could buy 10 years ago. However, with the advent of cheaper chips that are able to do a load of work, we are seeing that new devices themselves are getting cheaper.

 

This week, I came upon a January announcement of Kia’s Uvo system. This is based on Windows embedded technologies and will probably be very similar to Ford’s Sync system.

 

The Kia Optima will feature Uvo

Ford is thus coming to an end of its exclusivity deal with Microsoft. The automotive company now needs to add value to its product in order to keep its competitive edge. And this is what they are doing with the new MyFordTouch which will be, as far as I can tell, the most complete connectivity package ever found in a car. It will bridge everything, from your iPhone to your computer, enabling you to listen to music or having your passengers surf the web.

 

MyFordTouch will debut on the new Ford Focus

 

This brings me to my earlier point. Years before, this type of innovation would first be presented on cars that most people cannot afford. The early adopters would pay for the development costs of an unknown technology. Now, however, this is not new technology but a new application of things we are used too. We know it works, and while there is still a market risk, there are many more people able (and willing) to buy a Ford Focus than a 100K Audi A8.

 

There will still be new devices that will be insanely expensive at first. But we will see in the near future, smart developments of current tech that will be accessible to all.

The internet system (update)

I talked a little while ago about how internet access was important to anyone throughout Canada. Well Saturday, the Canadian government announced a $76.7 million in investment to bring broadband access to rural areas.

This is obviously positive but is not enough. The difference between Canada and most other developed countries is population density. Broadband networks are much more expensive to build here compared the gain a telecommunication company might get from it. What we would need is a true plan of development for our network infrastructures. We need it in order to stay competitive in this decade.

Creativity in a regulated environment

I work in the pharmaceutical industry and often times I hear about how we have a very rigid framework and how, at least on the production side, innovation is very limited. I’m guessing the same is true for the aerospace industry, the dairy industry or well, anything where the government has a say in what ends up in the consumer’s hands.

However, regulations are simply the limits of what you can do. Those guidelines are really the framework of any possible innovation. Indeed, in the quality department, we went from testing endotoxins in rabbits to finding a way to use horseshoe crab serum without even killing them. In the production department, our machines get insanely efficient while being safer than ever, both for the consumer and the operator.

Obviously, bad regulations might stifle innovation. A document saying that you must use a particular technique without giving an overarching rationale will have companies simply and stupidly applying the law. For example, the early interpretation of the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, which aimed to put the basis of paperless systems within the pharmaceutical industry probably scared quite a few people out of using computers in their business with the FDA, at least for a while. However, when you know the reason, you will try to find better ways to achieve that goal. This is how we went from testing for contamination using century old Pasteur’s techniques to having the rapid microbiology machines.

Another thing that I feel a lot of people in the industry do not understand is that the FDA is on their side (interestingly enough, people outside the industry understand this and maybe take this fact to the other extreme). The first goal of any agency is to ensure the safety of the general public. The second goal of the agency is to insure the survival and the growth of the industry for which it was created. This means that, up to a point, agency will welcome any innovation that the companies make that result in both of their goals being met.