Struggling with plunging demand for its COVID products, Pfizer Inc. has a new plan to reach potential customers: Cutting out the middleman and selling drugs straight to patients. The company launched a website on Tuesday that allows users to schedule vaccine appointments or meet virtually with doctors who can prescribe its medicines for COVID, migraine and other conditions, which are then shipped to patients’ doorsteps.
Called PfizerForAll, the site allows Pfizer to offer its products to customers where they so often are — online, Googling their various health anxieties. “We’re all about delivering breakthroughs that change patients’ lives,” Aamir Malik, Pfizer’s U.S.
chief commercial officer, said in an interview, “but that’s only effective and impactful if you can get people the medicines they need when they need them.” In January, Eli Lilly & Co. launched its LillyDirect portal to sell popular obesity and diabetes treatments, marking the first time a major drug company hawked products straight to consumers.
While some doctors have questioned the model’s safety, the emergence of PfizerForAll suggests a potential Big Pharma arms race to sell directly to consumers, said Tim Mackey, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies the pharmaceutical industry. The direct sales also circumvent players like pharmacy benefit managers that drugmakers say reduce their revenue and hurt patient access. Drug companies have historically spent fortunes on speaking fees, lavish meals, and conference sponsorships to influence prescribers.
Since the 1990s, drug companies have increasingly targeted consumers through ads urging them to ask their doctors for specific products. Patients may hold even more sway or medical decision-making when they meet with doctors online. “This is really the next evolution of direct-to-consumer advertising,” Mackey said.
“With the rise of telehealth, I think manufacturers are realizing they need to get into this space.” Some doctors worry this could be risky for patients. The American College of Physicians has warned that such platforms often rely on telehealth prescribers rather than family doctors with whom patients have a relationship.
That could “leave patients confused and misinformed about medications,” the physicians’ group said. Pfizer says its platform has checks and balances in place to prevent any undue influence. Patients can use the site to schedule a COVID vaccination with Moderna Inc.
’s shot just as easily as Pfizer’s. Those who suspect they have COVID can schedule a $35 virtual consultation through telehealth provider UpScriptHealth or an in-person doctor visit through ZocDoc Inc., each operating independently from the drugmaker, according to Pfizer.
The encounters might yield a prescription for Paxlovid, Pfizer’s oral treatment for COVID, or a recommendation for bed rest. For migraine patients, a PfizerForAll telehealth consultation could spur a prescription for Nurtec, the company’s migraine drug that’s endorsed by Lady Gaga, or lead to patients getting Lilly’s Emgality. Pfizer’s website is also the latest example of the New York pharmaceutical company embracing its brand.
Pfizer released a minute-long Super Bowl commercial portraying the company as a force driving science forward, underscored by Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” The new portal offers “an opportunity to say Big Pharma isn’t necessarily bad pharma,” said Pradeep Chintagunta, a marketing professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business who studies the drug industry. “They can communicate more directly with people and say, ‘I’m actually trying to help people.
We’re not as bad of folks as people might make us out to be.’” And Pfizer could use the sales boost. The company’s revenue hit $100 billion in 2022 on pandemic-related sales but has since declined on waning demand for its COVID shot and pill.
Efforts to cut in on the massive market for novel weight-loss medicines have also run into disappointments and delay. Sizable bets on cancer therapies have yet to win over Wall Street. Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla has indicated that he sees the company name as an untapped resource.
In an investor conference last month, he crowed about the results of the Super Bowl ad, without offering specifics. “That was an investment in the brand equity of Pfizer,” Bourla said. “It was tremendous, a tremendous success on that front.
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