KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The rate at which companies have been creating positions for a chief digital officer, or CDO, has slowed to a trickle
• Just 54 companies, or 2.2%, had created a new CDO position in 2018.
• It’s because, these days, that job is the responsibility of the entire organization.
• Pharma companies continue to view digital as a “tactic” rather than integrate digital into the whole organization.

IN SUMMARY: Pharma has the help wanted sign out but very few people are biting because working in pharma often means back-to-back meetings, matrix decision making, and regulatory people who are inflexible.

• A Kaiser Family Foundation poll last March found that 80 percent of the country believes that prescription drug prices are unreasonable.
• Drug spending in the United States is slowing. Retail prescription drugs represent just 10 percent of the $3.5 trillion the nation spent on health care in 2017, according the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s an increase of just 0.4 percent.
• 90 percent of prescriptions in the United States are less-expensive generic copies of brand-name drugs.
• 83 percent of Americans insured by their employer had a plan with at least three prescription drug tiers, according to the Kaiser Foundation. The average co-pay for the highest tier was $110.