Getting New Cures to Patients

When Colonel Eli Lilly founded the company in 1876, he wanted his company to develop only medicines that would be dispensed at the suggestion of physicians, rather than by the sideshow hucksters that were common then. Today, most of our products still require a doctor's prescription.

Nevertheless, the nature of health care decision-making today is changing. There are many more parties involved -- the doctor, the pharmacist, the payor (for example, your insurance company or employer), and especially the patient. New regulatory guidelines in the U.S. allow pharmaceutical companies to communicate more directly with patients, and they are clearly hungry for reliable information on health issues that affect them.

Thus, ensuring the availability of our products and demonstrating their value is more complex and challenging than ever in today's health care environment. Lilly sales representatives meet face-to-face with primary care doctors, endocrinologists, psychiatrists, oncologists, heart specialists, surgeons and other physicians to communicate the benefits of our innovative pharmaceutical products. Another team works with managed care and other health care service organizations. These include hospitals, health maintenance organizations, pharmacy benefit managers, drug wholesalers and chain drug stores, group purchasing organizations, long-term care organizations such as nursing homes, large employers and government entities.

Lilly is helping these organizations understand that getting the right medication to the patient is not just a cost-per-pill decision. The right medication not only yields the best results, it also lowers long-term costs (including the cost of disability and absenteeism) when compared to alternate treatments. We support seminars and workshops to increase disease awareness, make diagnosis easier and help decision makers keep up with current clinical data and best practices (right down to practical matters like how to encourage patients to comply with their doctors' instructions in taking their medicine). Only when patients are getting full benefit of the newest, most effective medicines can Lilly say that our innovation job is done.

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