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Baxter — Treating Ethics As A Serious Corporate Issue

In my post Effective Corporate Ethics — More Than A Code Part 1 I indicated I would have  additional posts on Corporate Ethics.

Baxter, a major health care company, clearly displays its position on ethics. On the About Baxter page there is a link to Ethics (see right).

Including a link/reference to Ethics on About pages is a metric that the company is serious about Ethics.

Another Ethics indicator is this powerful statement in the company’s Ethics Code (PDF) (a must read):

Our Integrity
Baxter’s success is based on our personal accountability for results and integrity. Patients, doctors, customers, regulators, investors, and our employees count on the integrity of our work every day:

INTEGRITY in our work place
INTEGRITY in research and development
INTEGRITY in manufacturing
INTEGRITY in our products
INTEGRITY in sales and marketing
INTEGRITY in community relations

At Baxter, integrity means we are honest and fair. We keep our promises. We encourage questions. We value discussion, and we follow legal requirements. Integrity works here. Integrity wins here.

Next, click on the Ethics and Compliance icon or link and you are taken to a comprehensive view of Baxter’s Ethics Process–

• Code of Conduct
• Ethics & Compliance Standards for Baxter Suppliers
• Ethics and Compliance Helpline
• Professional Codes of Ethics
• Ethics and Compliance
• Authorized Distributor of Record
• United States Distribution Licensing
• For More Information

I have repeatedly called for documents to be available in HTML format, now I find a good reason to have only PDF documents…

Baxter has its Code of Ethics in a number of languages: employees need to have a hard copy, so downloading the Code makes sense.

Baxter explains its Ethics Program in the Ethics and Compliance section and goes well beyond just posting an Ethics Code and whistleblowing helpline.

Here is what they cover–

1. Baxter’s Procedures and Standards of Conduct
   1. Personal Responsibilities
   2. Manager’s Responsibilities
2. Baxter’s Board of Directors and Vice President of Ethics and Compliance
3. Education and Training
4. Ethics and Compliance Communications and Investigations
   1. Communications and Reporting
   2. No Retaliation Policy
   3. Investigations
5. Monitoring and Auditing
6. Enforcing Standards/ Hiring and Disciplinary Action
7. Correction and Preventative Action

This is very comprehensive and indicates that Baxter treats Ethics as a serious business issue.

Does your corporate site convey the same message?

Pharma Companies Educating Stakeholders On Drug Information

I recently posted some profiles of bio-pharma companies and noted how they attempted to explain highly technical information. While they did a commendable job, there was a need to better describe the nature of clinical trials and to define terminology.

GlaxoSmithKline comes to the rescue with their website Clinical Study Register. This is a separate site from the main Glaxo website.

Items of note include–

• On the right is a comprehensive search for all of the company’s drugs.
• There is a link to a glossary of terms on the left.
• And links to other websites.

Nicely done.

I clicked on the Protocol Summary for Bupropion. (This is a partial list). Some of the terms may not be commonly known.

For example “Double-blind”. To get a definition you may go to the Glossary of Terms section and get –

Double-Blind. In a double-blind study, neither the investigator nor the subject knows which drug or placebo the subject received.

OK, I get it.

Other companies offer similar websites. For example Lilly offers its Clinical Trial Registry; the Terminology section is useful.

Amgen offers comprehensive clinical drug trials information on the corporate website.

Note also the link to the Code of Ethics.

All these companies are to be commended for their efforts to educate stakeholders on important drug information.

Dynavax–Small Company, Frontline Web Practices

You might think that large companies have the best websites. Well Dynavax may have an issue with that thinking. First let’s look at what they do–

Scientific expertise and proprietary technologies drive our discovery and development of novel Toll-like Receptor (TLR) based product candidates.  Our focus is on serious medical needs in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases.

Unless you are in the biotechnology company, this needs more explanation. And indeed the company in the Technology section provides more description with visuals –

While not a primer, it offers some explanation that at least helps visitors learn a bit more about the company’s focus.

Next, a look at the Corporate Governance section which indicates that the company is very much on the front line regarding offering both HTML and PDF access to information –

Next there is an unusual feature using a technique normally used for site navigation. For example, when you click on Code of Conduct–

each section has a drop down feature that permits instant access to each subsection and PDFs are available.

This feature is used in other sections such as News and Events. Companies should take note of this technique and stop relying solely on PDFs.

Dynavax may be a small company for now, but it is front line in offering innovative website practices.

Cytokinetics A Unique Company

In my continuing search for interesting websites, I came upon Cytokinetics. The name itself was enough to make me look further. When I looked for what the company does, I found this –

Cytokinetics is a different kind of company. It is increasingly unusual that an emerging growth biotechnology company would be dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of therapeutics. Similarly, it is more and more uncommon for a biopharmaceutical company to leverage their expertise in one area, in our case the cytoskeleton and the biology of muscle function, to tackle the pursuit of new treatments for multiple disease areas.

cytoskeleton–System of protein filaments in the cytoplasm of a eucaryotic cell that gives the cell a polarized shape and the capacity for directed movement. Its most abundant components are actin filaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments.

Hmm, I am starting to understand the genesis of the company’s name but I’m still not clear about what the company does. To its credit, the company offers additional information in their Research Section. There is a video that uses a city as a metaphor to explain cytoskeleton. However, and oddly, there is no audio. 

There are more resources on the Cardiac Muscle Contractility section.

This video has audio and does a decent job explaining technical information. The company provides more technical explanations on its Our Research but more videos such as this one would be useful to potential investors.

Another good feature on the website is the visual display of their product pipeline –

This is good but would be better if they added explanations of what the Phases mean–

PHASE I TRIALS: Initial studies to determine the metabolism and pharmacologic actions of drugs in humans, the side effects associated with increasing doses, and to gain early evidence of effectiveness; may include healthy participants and/or patients.

PHASE II TRIALS: Controlled clinical studies conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug for a particular indication or indications in patients with the disease or condition under study and to determine the common short-term side effects and risks.

PHASE III TRIALS: Expanded controlled and uncontrolled trials after preliminary evidence suggesting effectiveness of the drug has been obtained, and are intended to gather additional information to evaluate the overall benefit-risk relationship of the drug and provide and adequate basis for physician labeling.

PHASE IV TRIALS: Post-marketing studies to delineate additional information including the drug’s risks, benefits, and optimal use.

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov

Suggestion: The company is headed in the right direction regarding education on its products. It would do well to provide more videos and perhaps put this and other information in one section.

Finally another good feature is that the company offers a video, with David Cragg, SVP Human Human Resources, that outlines the Corporate Culture. Most corporate websites that display their Culture do so typically in text. Cytokinetics is unusual in providing a video.

Cytokinetics — a company with unique products and an interesting website.

Tylenol – Brand Rebuilding Part Deux?

Tylenol is one of the best brand rebuilding stories that marketing students in just about every college learn about.  It’s a great example of a company responding to negative publicity (in the case of Tylenol – the worst publicity you can imagine – 7 cyanide poisoning deaths in the 1980s from tampering with Tylenol packaging).  I remember the incident well, and the team behind Tylenol did an amazing job of very quickly regaining consumer trust in the brand.  What could have been the end of a brand that at the time still competed closely with aspirin, became a minor bump in the brand’s growth to become the number one over-the-counter pain reliever.

Today, Tylenol faces a new battle.  This time, the fight is with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who wants to regulate sales of Tylenol by reducing the amount of acetaminophen (the active ingredient) in Tylenol claiming it causes liver damage and possibly making Extra Strength Tylenol available as a prescription only. 

Certainly, sales of Tylenol will go down if the Extra Strength Tylenol product becomes OTC only.  Or will they?  Will consumers actually switch to a different product with a different active ingredient or wait to get a prescription for Extra Strength Tylenol, or will they just take a higher dosage of regular Tylenol?  Is the FDA actually solving the problem?  Or will this be just another small bump in the Tylenol brand story?

Either way, I’m sure the Tylenol team (under the power of Johnson & Johnson – a company that is very, very good at decentralizing and protecting one brand from another at all costs) is already fast at work at a new strategy, should one become necessary if the FDA successfully passes the new regulation it’s proposing.  According to BrandWeek, full-page ads have already appeared in newspapers calling Tylenol the “safest brand of pain reliever you can choose.”  However, it’s a different world now than it was in the 1980s.  The social web is alive and spreading information, news, and rumors faster than ever.  That’s something the Tylenol team didn’t have to think about in the 1980s. 

We’ll have to wait and see how this one develops.  What do you think?  Will this become a big problem for Tylenol, or will the brand rebound with nary a scratch?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Flickr

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