Message from Angus Russell
Angus talks about CR at Shire, and the issues now facing the pharmaceutical industry.
This is my first Corporate Responsibility (CR) report as Chief Executive Officer, and the first since I handed over the chair of the Shire CR Committee to Tatjana May. But as I said last year, I’ve taken my commitment to the whole area of CR with me into my new role, and it has, as I expected, become more central to that role as the year has gone on.
This time last year, one of the things I said I wanted to do was to involve the Board more closely in our CR agenda, and we have indeed started to do this, both in terms of risk assessment, and through the new Science and Technology committee, which oversees the scientific techniques we employ, and their wider ethical implications. This is only one example (there are many more) of how CR issues are becoming more and more closely integrated into the way we manage the Company day-to-day. We’re not alone in this—most large businesses are launching similar initiatives—but I think the pharmaceutical sector as a whole has particular challenges it needs to address, and many of the changes we’re making to our corporate strategy and way of working at Shire are either in response to this, or, in some cases, in anticipation of it. Tatjana will talk about what we’re doing to develop a new sustainability strategy for Shire. As part of that work we’ve looked in depth at the wider trends affecting our sector, and I was not at all surprized to find that the people surveyed in a recent Harris Interactive poll in the US ranked pharmaceuticals 13th out of 17 industries for honesty.
A new phase for pharma
In the last 20 to 30 years there’s been a huge investment in new therapies, and as a result there’s now such a vastrange of treatments available that even healthcare professionals struggle to keep up. The whole drugs market has become acutely and intensely competitive—so much so that you can now see branded medicines being advertized on American TV, as if they were just another consumer product. There’s no doubt that many in our sector see this ‘direct to consumer’ marketing of brands as a step too far and I would agree, but I would also argue that the prohibition of contact between patient and pharmaceutical company that prevails in Europe can just as easily lead to public distrust. My own ideal would be somewhere in the middle, and we welcome the debate at the EU level on the commission’s draft proposal on Information To Patients (ITP) which we hope will find the right balance.
In medical terms we’re starting to see the emergence of ‘personalized’ or customized treatments—a shift away from a mass-market ‘one drug fits all’ approach towards one where the emphasis is on discovering what will work best for each individual patient. The recent advances in diagnostics are making this possible, and while it may initially sound like a more expensive approach for healthcare providers, prescribing the most effective therapy first time and every time will actually save money in the end, as well as producing a far better outcome for the person being treated. Importantly, I think this trend will put the patient back where they should be: at the heart of what the pharmaceutical industry exists to do.
This is one reason why I’ve spent so much of my time this year working with the Shire Leadership Team to review our corporate strategy. We’ve never wanted to be ‘big pharma’, and most of the people who work here do so for exactly that reason: they want to be part of a company that has an agile entrepreneurial culture, and where their personal efforts can make a real difference to patients’ lives. The whole Leadership Team is passionately committed to retaining that spirit, and you can see it both in the new corporate brand, which we discuss in more detail on pages 8 and 9, and in our new purpose statement, which is to ‘enable people with life-altering conditions to lead better lives’. We have financial and commercial goals as well, of course, but the core of our raison d’etre is to help patients and their families.
In my view, this is what CR really means for a company like ours. You can see it in action every day at our Human Genetics Therapies (HGT) business. The people who work there specialize in treating extremely rare genetic diseases, many of them life-threatening, and many of them afflicting children. As a result they have a special and very moving commitment to these patients, and know many of them by name. It’s an extreme example of personalized medicine, and an extremely successful one; it’s also one we can learn from, and adapt for our Specialty Pharmaceuticals business. The number of patients involved in the Specialty therapy area is much higher, but there’s still huge value in engaging more actively and collaboratively with both them and the specialist physicians who treat their conditions, and we’ve already started to do this, notably in this year’s continued rollout of LIALDA® (mesalamine), our new treatment for ulcerative colitis.
As this might suggest, I see this approach as an obvious win-win for Shire, from both a business and a CR perspective. We want to be a responsible and ethical business, but also one that leads the way in its industry, and delivers strong returns for shareholders and cashflow, which can be re-invested into the business to help bring new treatments to patients with specialist and rare diseases—that’s immensely positive: it’s a sustainable business model in every sense of the word.
I’m proud to say that integrity has always been a genuine and fundamental ethos at Shire, and it’s wonderful to see that recognised in the Gold status we’ve just been awarded by Business in the Community. I see this award as a testament to the hard work and commitment of all my colleagues on the CR committee, supported by many employees across the company. I would like to thank you all for this tremendous effort, which has lead to this important recognition for Shire. There’s still more we have to do, but I’m confident we’ll continue to make significant progress both in this year and future years.
Did you know...
One of our brave employees ran the
London Marathon and raised
around $23,000 for
charity.
Responsibility
We provided more than $165,000 in funding to replace a 20-year old playground in Philadelphia’s
Feltonville Recreation
Centre.
