After decades of the red carpet, since 2000 the drug sales representative (ISF) has seen his role in the Pharma company reduced. How to change to stay in the market.
There are 20,000 drug sales representatives (ISF) in Italy, but 5 years ago there were 35,000 and in 2011 the drop was 1.7% (Cegedim report). They carry out their activities in the area on behalf of pharmaceutical companies and are an important source of periodic updates for doctors, pharmacists and veterinarians for a series of technical-scientific news on drugs, medicinal specialties and dietary and herbal products, but also within the Service National Health Service (SSN). The ISF has the task of collecting in a capillary way elements on the therapeutic and side effects in the use of the specialties themselves in order to promote constant improvement (Pharmacovigilance). In carrying out its activity, the ISF must provide objective, real information supported by printed material, prospectuses and free samples without amplifying the real potential of the products and/or minimizing their contraindications (Law 833)1978, Art.3).
"15,000 ISF have been cut in 5 years, and yet, the pharmaceutical sector boasts excellent financial balance sheets, - denounced Carmelo Carnovale, National President of Federaisf, the Federation of whistleblower associations at the National Congress last November. For Carnovale, the problem of the cut started in 2000 alongside, for example, the one linked to atypical contracts and mobility: "There are companies that close entire lines of scientific information, effectively depriving doctors and above all citizens of a service that is provided for by law and which contributes to pharmacovigilance Until the first half of the 2000s the corporate equation was “more ISF, more contacts with the prescriber and more sales”.
With this axiom, pharmaceutical companies have formed oversized commercial structures compared to the market which, in the meantime, was beginning to show the first signs of crisis and was gradually becoming more and more saturated.
Since the second half of the 2000s almost all pharmaceutical companies, also by virtue of the continuous mergers between big pharma, have found themselves having to restructure their workforce on the basis of a new scenario: expiry of blockbuster patents, continuous reductions in healthcare expenditure decided by
