Eli Lilly’s Luca Visini makes no catchy statements on India-specific drug pricing or acquisitions as he outlines the road ahead for the multinational company clocking its 25th year in India, this year.
“Lilly has a good story to tell on partnerships. As a matter of fact we are here thanks to a partnership,” says Visini, who took charge as Managing Director in India about nine months ago. And while the future would see more of the same, Visini told BusinessLine that he looks to “keep the heritage, while going wider and quicker” in terms of maximising exposure to its innovative products through partnerships, if required. Lilly has partnerships here with Lupin and Cipla.
To fuel organic growth, Lilly marks this significant year of its presence in India with its entry into the autoimmune segment through the launch of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drug Olumiant (baricitinib). The drug is for treatment of adults with moderate to severe active RA who have responded inadequately to or are intolerant to other medication, he explains.
Presently, the standard treatment, “depending on when you get to the doctor,” is anti-inflammatory drugs, pain-killers and biological injectables. “the innovation here is that it is an oral, once-a-day pill, can be taken before the injectable and it brings down pain rapidly,” he said. Priced at ₹85,000 for a month’s treatment, he said, patients who have been prescribed the drug by a doctor would have access to support that included educational material on the drug, besides price-related support as well.
Out of pocket payments
Unwilling to be drawn into commenting on differential or India-specific pricing, something that many multinationals operating in India do, Visini said, “Every country according to their healthcare system has very different situation. So the price is really specific to every country.”
Explaining why he did not want to compare the cost between different markets, he said, “How do I compare a country that has full (insurance) coverage to a country that has full out of pocket (payment)? It is difficult to compare two completely different (systems).”
Building on this observation, he added, “There are countries where the government takes over. So, we have discussions with the government. In this case for us for India, this is the price we are able to make it available,” he said, adding that the patient support programme was taking into account patient affordability. It is not important to know the price in Italy, he says, adding that it was more important to understand what it takes to make the drug affordable internally, in India.
On the other niggling topic for multinationals in India, he said, after bringing in innovative products into India for 25 years, Lilly was in favour of legislation to protect intellectual property and its enforcement.