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Q&A

Duncan Learmouth was appointed Senior Vice President Corporate Communications and Community Partnerships in 2006. Here he sets out his vision for CR at GSK.

What is your vision for CR at GSK?
There are three elements. We want to achieve high standards of behaviour in everything that we do, in all parts of the company.

And we want to be known for that. We’ve adopted the theme ‘performance with integrity’ which has been very successful in engaging our employees. Secondly, we need to bring the outside world into our decision making. Only through a full understanding of stakeholder views will we make the best decisions. The third element is our desire to be a real member of the local community everywhere that we operate. That includes playing our part in the wider global community by contributing to better healthcare.

Where do you think GSK is doing well?
We are very engaged on issues of the developing world – and in my experience this is quite unusual for a public company. I believe that we lead our industry on R&D for neglected diseases, preferential pricing and voluntary licencing and are well ahead of most other sectors. We take a long-term approach and our programmes involve a high degree of partnership and dialogue with NGOs, governments, and organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the Gates Foundation.

Where should GSK be doing more?
Sales and marketing practices are always a hot topic for the pharmaceutical industry. We need to ensure that we keep up with public and regulatory expectations of how we market our products and ensure GSK policies meet or exceed these changing expectations. However, being the first to change commercial practices runs the risk of reducing our competitiveness, so we must also be proactive in encouraging others in our industry to follow suit.

What is the biggest challenge?
The most difficult task is finding a balance between the needs of different stakeholders. Our investors are concerned primarily with profit. CR is important to them because it affects the long-term success of the company but the next quarter’s earnings are often a more pressing priority. On the other hand, NGOs and others in society would like us to be less profitable and more concerned with solving society’s healthcare problems.

Are GSK’s programmes for the developing world philanthropy or are they part of your business?
There’s no doubt that they are part of the business. The need for our medicines will not go away so we need to make sure that our programmes are sustainable, and the best way to do this is make sure they are part of our day to day business. A great example of this is our long-term commitment to providing not-for-profit HIV medicines in the world’s poorest countries. There is also such immense stakeholder pressure on this subject that it would be impossible to turn a blind eye. But it’s not just about responding to pressure from the outside. Our 100,000 employees want to work for a company that is addressing these challenges. We have a duty to use our scientific know-how and human capital to make a difference where we can – it’s essential to our own sense of integrity.

Why haven’t you reduced the price of your products in all markets?
To be a sustainable business we have to make an adequate return or we won’t be able to discover new medicines. We’re under immense pressure from competitors and investors. Nevertheless we are looking at the issue of pricing beyond the world’s poorest countries.

Are you researching new medicines that are really needed or just looking for ‘me-too’ drugs?
In many cases the drugs that are really needed will be the most profitable because that’s where the demand is. New drugs for cancer or Alzheimer’s will be meeting a huge unmet medical need and will be profitable too. The problem is that these diseases tend to present extreme scientific challenges and require novel scientific approaches which carry a greater risk of failure. Diseases of the developing world present a different problem – there is great need but no viable commercial market for new products. We get round this problem by working through public private partnerships and are very active on R&D for neglected tropical diseases. I think the debate about me-too drugs has been taken too far. If a new drug enables patients to take fewer doses each day or reduces side-effects then it may seem like only a small improvement but it can make a very big difference to the treatment outcome.

The pharmaceutical industry has been criticised for lack of transparency over clinical trial results. Are you doing anything to address these concerns?
There is a perception that the pharmaceutical industry is less than transparent and I think this is partly because we haven’t done a very good job of communicating the challenges we face. I believe that our online Clinical Trial Register has gone some way to address these concerns. But the communication of data from clinical trials is a tough area. Weighing up the balance of risks and benefits from a medicine is rarely straightforward. Data isn’t black and white – it requires interpretation and judgement. This inevitably means that people will have different views and that our knowledge will change over time as new drugs are tested and used. So actually talking about medicines to doctors is not straight-forward. This communication is very important but very challenging.

Is the pharmaceutical industry sustainable?
We have a ‘contract’ with society – in return for investing in new drugs we generally have around ten years of intellectual property protection on our products before generics can be made. R&D is uncertain and unpredictable so in some periods we are more successful at this than in others. But I believe that the basic model is still a good one because it fosters a high level of innovation. Of course there are challenges and the industry must continually look for ways to improve R&D productivity. We have a unique type of product that plays a very personal role in people’s lives. Nowadays good health is seen as a right but it’s also a business and for some people this is uncomfortable. Generally, though, I believe people accept the need for a trade-off – they may not like us making a profit from health but they accept it because it’s the best way to encourage the discovery of new medicines.

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