Whenever you hear someone from Pharma talk about healthcare in China, you're sure to hear the phrase 'emerging market'. Within the industry there has been a Klondike style gold rush running for several years.
Without question, in established markets such as EU big five and North America - as product pipelines constrict and marketing authorisation expiry appears on the horizon for some of the traditional cash cows - the wagon train heading east has gathered pace.
The commercial reality is that these particular prospectors have needed more than a gold pan and luck. Heavy investment in manufacturing and sales infrastructure, running into hundreds or thousands of millions of Euros has been the pre-requisite.
But to capitalise on that investment, huge communication and cultural challenges must be overcome.
Many key industry players are already a long way down the road and will doubtless benefit from being amongst the first to piece together this particular Chinese puzzle. But as the web access explosion continues unabated in China - thanks to the influence of digital media - might those who sat back and waited whilst others invested, now be able to compete without the massive investment required say, 10 years ago?
Using digital as part of the mix to educate doctors, market a treatment approach or secure advocates for a brand without having to set foot through the doctor’s door is only possibly if the physician has viable web access.
As a proportion of the population, web access is still relatively low in China, but we're looking at very big numbers, so a small proportion is actually a huge audience. As at June 2009 CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) established there were circa 338 million web users in China, at the time 25.5% of the population - or roughly equivalent to two thirds the entire population of the EU.
Between 2008 and 2009 alone, the figure for China had grown by 40 million people.
The rural population is very different from the cities. But if one considers the 10 Chinese cities with a population of more than 10 million people (so a smaller population 'sample' group, but still in excess of 100 million people), many of them white collar workers including doctors, then web access leaps to 67.7%. If we focus in on doctors, we're seeing close to 100% access.
During 2010 EPG Health Media will launch 'EPG Asia' a local language version of the established medicines and disease knowledge base at www.epgonline.org . This will allow doctors in China to access medicines and drug data, treatment and disease knowledge, educational tools and guidelines in their own language. If you'd like to find out more about our plans and how you can benefit contact us .
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Welcome to the EPG Health Media blog. Are you a pharma industry professional, marketeer, communications specialist, doctor or other healthcare professional? EPG Health Media is a digital publishing and communications business focused on healthcare. We publish epgonline.org - a medicine and disease knowledge base for healthcare professionals, epgpatientdirect.org - a patient and consumer health matters portal. We also provide the health sector with e-communications and market research services.
