The good doctor is telling his own work/life story on his blog at the moment.
Well worth a read.
Here's a great piece about how he (when he was MD of the Nordic Region) and his team whooped Nexium (esomeprazole) and AstraZeneca's ass with Prevacid (lansoprazole).
"So I figured if the carrot doesn’t work, maybe a machine gun will, like forcing them (Swedish doctors) to use the new drug through low prices and mandatory formularies. That worked. The Swedish doctors were forced to change their wasteful ways.
The rest is pharmaceutical history in Europe. (And today they have generic substitution, further putting pressure on drug costs). Sales took off like crazy. Within a year we had about 30% market share in value and close to 50% in volume.
Astra was being killed in their own home market. And the press was helping us. Because this is when I learned to work with the press, not against it, the way most pharma companies in reality do. (Some virtually refused to respond to press inquiries ten years ago.) And the press was having a field day, because here was this tiny American company beating the sh-t out of one of Sweden’s crown jewels and the Swedish business establishment.
Boy, were “they” pissed. I even got called in to private meetings where "they" tried to make me stop. I told them my share holders were happy and asked if they had a problem with their own share holders. They didn’t think that was funny.
However, Insider thinks it's hilarious!
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