Lilly’s Taurel Dreams of Information Revolution
Posted by Avery Johnson
October 2, 2007, 3:46 pm
Eli Lilly’s CEO Sidney Taurel is on the road making his case for the health-care system of the future. And part of his plan is a whizzbang system for assuring drug safety.
In the keynote speech at a Cleveland Clinic conference on innovation, Taurel outlined a health-information system that would detect drug risks earlier through sharing and mining of electronic medical records.
newsroom.lilly.com
Modernizing health information technology could provide a powerful tool for real-life surveillance of drugs on the market. He says, for instance, that cardiovascular side effects with Merck’s Vioxx could have been detected within three months of the painkiller hitting the market. Although such a powerful system would inevitably uncover flaws in medicines, Taurel suggests that Lilly and other drug makers would ultimately benefit. A better surveillance system would also document the benefits of medical treatment.
In the end, a robust system for monitoring drugs would give the public and the FDA more confidence in medicines and a backstop that could make it easier for the agency to approve them.
Still, it’s a bit risky for Mr. Taurel to stump for transparency on drug risks. Lilly has been criticized for downplaying data suggesting its antipsychotic Zyprexa contributes to weight gain and diabetes. And the pharmaceutical industry has been lambasted in recent years for suppressing negative results from clinical trials.
On his way to the Cleveland airport afterward Taurel told the Health Blog by phone that his reform proposal is part of an attempt to answer his critics. “There is an issue of perception and image in the industry that we all have to address,” he said. Of Zyprexa, he said that the weight-gain risk appeared in the drug’s label from the start. But “there are things that take longer to pick up, and it’s always better to know about them early.”
Lilly’s part of a pilot program with Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer to look for signs of side effects in existing databases. Taurel says a system like the one he envisions would cost a lot–between $20 billion and $40 billion over the next 10 years. And he acknowledged that those paying for its development wouldn’t likely be drug makers but the government, insurers, hospitals, and other health-care providers.
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