Welcome to Pharma Blogosphere; Health Care Renewal, Orange Book Blog, Drug Channels, etc.

A few new blogs have entered the Outer Sphere of the Pharma Blogosphere^TM that I think you should look at. Keep in mind that I put ALL new blogs in the Outer Sphere until I can access whether or not they are truly focused on pharmaceutical topics and otherwise worthy of entering the Inner Sphere. [BTW, if you feel that a blog in the Outer Sphere deserves to be among the Inner Planets, drop me a comment.]

Health Care Renewal
This blog's mission states: "Address[es] threats to health care's core values, especially those stemming from concentration and abuse of power." [Have you expressed your mission yet? Please let me know what it is here.]

This sounds very promising because if you look up "concentration and abuse of power" in the Pharma Blogosphere Dictionary, you'll find a picture of a pharmaceutical company! Consequently, although Health Care Renewal covers the entire health care system, it is likely to often write about pharmaceutical industry abuses of power, since it happens so often!

Health Care Renewal has been around for quite a while, starting back on December 10, 2004 (beating my entry to the Pharma Blogosphere by 3 weeks!). Here's the opening post, which always is helpful to read whenever you are exploring blogs:

Health care around the world is beset by rising costs, declining access, stagnant quality, and increasingly dissatisfied health care professionals. Discussions with physicians and other professionals revealed pervasive concerns that the core values of health care are under siege. Patients and physicians are caught in cross-fires between conflicting interests, and subject to perverse incentives. Free speech and academic freedom are threatened. Psuedo-science and anti-science are gaining ground. Causes include the increasing dominance of health care by large organizations, often lead by the ill-informed, the self-interested, and even the corrupt. (1) However, such concentration and abuse of power in health care has rarely been discussed openly. This blog is dedicated to the open discussion of health care's current dysfunction with the hopes of generating its cures.

Oh, BTW, most of the authors are MDs.

Orange Book Blog
I love the logo! This blog focuses on the intersection of patent law and FDA law and is written by Aaron F. Barkoff, an attorney at McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP. A few of Aaron's buddy lawyers also are said to contribute. Orange Book Blog was started on July 1, 2006.

There's obviously a lot of news here on Rx-patent litigation, which is sometimes of interest to non-lawyers. Unfortunately, if you are looking for a critical analysis (eg, what effect all this is having on the industry, suggestions for coping, etc.) rather than a concise reporting of the facts and just the facts, you won't find much of that here. After all, these are lawyers, and they expect to paid for opinions ("Readers should be aware that MBHB represents many companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries...").

Drug Channels
This blog is represents the "Expert viewpoints by Dr. Adam J. Fein on the latest pharmaceutical industry trends affecting manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies, PBMs, and payers." This blog began on May 10, 2006 and the author is the founder and president of Philadelphia-based Pembroke Consulting, Inc. The company consults with pharmaceutical manufacturers on channel strategy, which is interesting because I plan to interview some experts on channel strategy viz-a-viz impact on marketing in an upcoming podcast (see Pharma Marketing Talk).

Drug Channels appears to be a very technical sort of blog of interest only to a select few professionals involved in drug channel management. For that and other reasons it is never likely to become an Inner Planet of the Pharma Blogosphere, which doesn't mean it is not a useful or interesting blog.