Pfizers miljö- och ansvarsblogg

CSR and Environmental Requirements in Public Procurement

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There has been a lot of discussions during recent years regarding socal and environmental criteria in public procurement. Read for instance my blog posts from May 26 2011, July 9 2010, June 17 2010, March 11 2010, and Dec 1 2009.

There are still some question marks existing, although the situation is much better and more stringent today due to recommendations and procurement criteria from Miljöstyrningsrådet (in English “The Swedish Environmental Management Council“) and to the joint program for sustainable procurement and code of conduct approved by all Swedish County Councils:

- Sustainable procurement

- Code of Conduct for suppliers (in English and in Swedish)

The Swedish Association of the Research Based Pharmaeutical ndustry, LIF, generally welcomes green and social criteria as long as they are fair and reasonable, connected to the product and/or service that is being procured, in compliance with the applicable regulation (”Lagen om Offentlig Upphandling“), and is being followed up. We have seen problems with the latter. Serious suppliers work very hard to respond correctly and professionally to all questions being asked in the tenders and it is un-fair and a waste of resources if the responses are not taken into account or performance is not followed up. A general feeling is that to often still “lowest price wins regardless of social and environental performance”, or any other type of “quality related” performace for that matter…

Due to this feeling that there is still room for improvement regarding follow-ups of the green and social crireiria for instance, I am very happy to see that Konkurrensverket (in English “Swedish Competition Authority”) just recently issued a document called “Miljöhänsyn och social hänsyn i offentlig upphandling” (read the press release and the full document (in Swedish)). One of the things they point out very clearly is that the criteria and the performence must be followed-up:

“Det är viktigt att de som ställer krav på till exempel miljöhänsyn eller sociala villkor också ser till konsekvenserna. Till exempel måste det finnas system för att kontrollera att kraven verkligen blir uppfyllda, säger Konkurrensverkets generaldirektör Dan Sjöblom.”

The document stresses also for instance the importance that criteria are relevant and appropriate for the product/serive being procured and that the critera must be founded on solid science. Konkurrensverket also cleraly states that alternative evidence for fulfilment of the crieteria, other types of evidence than the ones exemplified in the tender, have to be accepted. To me this is important since it is quite simple to just ask for e.g. an environmental certificate (e.g. ISO 14001), but it does take resources to evaluate performance when we describe our full environmental and CSR-programs to show real green and social high performance.

The document from Konkurrensverket is thick, and it takes time to read it, but it is very welcome initiative!

Blog Post Number 400: PiE in Parliament

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Swedish parliament house

If you read my blog post yesterday, you’ll know that I spoke with the All Party Committee on Environmental Objectives today in Swedish parliament. The topic was PiE, i.e. Pharmaceuticals in the Environment, or actually Pharmaceuticals and the Environment since we discussed not only pharmaceutical substances released into the environment from manufacturing or patient excretion but all different environmental aspects and pharmaceuticals. And I have to say that it is quite a coincident that such an important and interesting discussion takes place the day I write my 400th blog post!

I have had this blog since April 2008, and the topic “Pharmaceuticals and the Environment” has been one of the topics most frequently addressed. And today’s presentation in parliament discussed several of the issues that I have commented in blog posts over the years, e.g.

- Economic incentives for green pharmaceutiacls (read more in e.g. these blog posts: March 28 2011, Feb 23 2011)

- Releases of API (Active Pharmaceuticals Ingriedient) from manufacturing (read more in e.g. these blog posts: Aug 16 2010, Sept 10 2010)

- Swedish MPA’s proposal of inclusion of environmental requirements into GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) (read more in e.g. this blog post: Jan 5 2011)

- Environmental classification of pharmaceutical substances on fass.se

- Green Chemistry (read more in this blog post or on Pfizer’s global webpage)

As you saw in the end of yesterday’s blog post, my two key messages today were:

1. Never deny a patient valuable medical treatment due to environmental reasons. Patient safety shall always come first.
2. The All Party Committee should look upon and use all ongoing initiatives rather than initiate several new initiatives. The most important thing the All Party Committee could do regarding pharmaceuticals and environment is actually to secure that the “right political signals for action” are being sent!

And the “ongoing initiatives” that I refer to are of course the discussions on green economic incentives, MPA’s proposal regarding GMP-alterations, and the actions discussed in the Swedish National Pharmaceutical Strategy.

I am looking forward to continuing discussions with the All Party Committee on Environmental Objectives and thanks for the opportunity to give my reflections on Pharmaceuticals and the Environment in parliament today!

The parliament building

More on a green pricing and re-imbursement system…

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Going green...

As you know if you have followed my blog regularly, I am a big fan of market driven solutions. I believe change happens more rapidly if the market systems are designed to promote such a change. Today I would like to reflect upon some of the latest discussions I have participated in regarding a “green pricing and re-imbursement pharmaceutical system”. As a background I recommend that you read the blog posts from March 28, May 11, and May 17. Those blog posts describe the work we are doing in a broad stakeholder group regarding the development of a model for environmental assessments of pharmaceutical products. The model should help to differentiate between different products based on “greenness”. Such a model is of course crucial in a redesigned pricing and re-imbursement system where environmental aspects should be taking into account. As you saw in my blog post from Aug 28, the Swedish National Pharmaceutical Strategy commissions the Ministry for Health and Social Affairs to explore the opportunities to redesign the pricing and re-imbursement system to incorporate environmental considerations. I have strong hopes that such a redesign would open up for green economic incentives to “green products”.

Well, what is a green product? Yesterday, the stakeholder group developing a model for environmental assessments met again. And we have now managed to set up a model that we will share with all relevant stakeholders on a new round-table meeting at LIF (the Swedish Association of the Research Based Pharmaceutical Industry) on September 28, 10.00 to 13.00. I will not present the model here today, it should be discussed at the round-table meeting first, but I promise to come back with information on Sept 28. But let me say this much: Releases of API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingridient, i.e. the pharmeceutical substance) from manufacturing will play an important role in the model assessing greenness. This is in line with the general discussions that have been ongoing ever since the 2007 publication regarding releases from pharmaceutical manufacturing in India (read more via this link). But it is also well in line with the commission to LIF in the National Pharmaceutical Strategy regarding “promoting voluntary control av releases from pharmaceutical manufacturing” (point 7.2 in the Strategy Action Plan).

So, more to come on this. And actually more will come already tomorrow. I will then participate in a discussion in the parliament with the All Party Committee on Environmental Objectives. I will give a short presentation regarding Pharmaceuticals and the Environment, in connection to discussions regarding the Swedish Environmental Goal “A Non-Toxic Environment”. My key messages will be:

1. Never deny a patient valuable medical treatment due to environmental reasons. Patient safety shall always come first.

2. The All Party Committee should look upon and use all ongoing initiatives rather than initiate several new initiatives. The most important thing the All Party Committee could do regarding pharmaceuticals and environment is actually to secure that the “right political signals for action” are being sent!

I will come back with a blog post from tomorrow’s discussions in the parliament. And I have to say that a discussion on pharmaceuticals and the environment, held in the Swedish parliament, is a very good topic for my 400th blog post…

Use of Social Media in Health Care

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I participated in the conference “Sociala Medier i sjukvården - så funkar det!” (in English: “Use of Social Media in Health Care - this is how it works!”) today in Malmö. The conference was arranged by Dagens Medicin (a news magazine in the health care sector, roughly translated into “Today’s Medicine” in Englsih) and K-Street Advisors.

A very interesting, and hot, topic. I still find it somewhat funny that I get invited as a speaker to conferences on Social Media. I often declare that “I do not know anything about Social Media actually, I am just a very happy user of these new opportunities!”. But I take it as a strong sign of the lack of experience regarding social media in the health care sector, and the opportunities for great improvements, that I am being viewed as an expert… I have written about social media usage here at the blog previously, see for instance the blog post from Nov 24 last year.

So what did we talk about today? Theo Martins and Pelle Sjöqvist, both from K-Street Advisors, started in the morning as well as closed the conference in the afternoon talking about general aspects around the use of social media.

Theo Martins, K-Street Advisors

Pelle Sjöqvist, K-Street Advisors

Topics discussed were e.g. what social media is, how it works, how to get started, the difference between social media and other types of communication channels, and how social media could cause a crises or be used to manage a crisis. Pelle gave us also examples of usage of social media in the health care sector, or usages that affects us working in the sector, that he feels are worth exploring, e.g.

- Vårdguiden on Facebook

- Säkraresex.se by SLL (Stockholm County Council)

- Luskartan by Kronans Droghandel

- Flashback.org (where a lot of very strange, scary, and probably false discussions also about the health care sector can be found)

- Mayo Clinic

- Patients-like-me

I would of course also add More-than-medication and Can-You-Feel-My-Pain, but more on that later…

Presentations on use of social media ”from inside the health care sector” were given by

- Sara Natt och Dag who have met several patients telling about their diseases in the blogosphere in her profession as counselor. Very often these blogs are very open and honest. She has written several books about the phenomenon as such, and about the people she has met.

- Anna Jerdén, head of communication, Sörmland County Coucil, on their use of social media “for defence purposes” during a media crisis.

- Jens Larsson, General Counsel at the Uppsala County Council, about the legal issues around social media use, especially if you are a governmental official. My conclusion from his presentation would be that it is still a tricky area, still a lot of unanswered questions. But a guiding principle is of course that “use your common sense”. All the old privacy rules etc do of course apply also in these new communication channels!

- Mats Reimer, pediatrician from Mölnlycke, shared his experiences from being one of our most famous “blog doctors” in Sweden. Follow his blog on the webpage of Dagens Medicin.

Mats Reimer, pediatrician

- And then finally me talking about this blog (Ansvarsblogg.se), about the Dizza Tobak platform, and the Can-You-Feel-My-Pain initiative.

I talk about social media

As you probably understand I do not think social media is something “completely new and different”. To me it is just a new communication tool. Much faster and more powerful than anything we have seen before, but still something where a lot of our old rules and strategies still apply. You have to know what you want to do, you have to understand your target group, you need to carefully plan your launch of a new site or platform, you have to do a risk assessment before launch etc. etc. Just remember that everything goes faster and that you will not have full control of how things develop and evolve on the Internet… But the opportunities are so great that those risks are worth taking.

I used Dizza Tobak as an example of the possibilities to share information and experiences, or in this case uploaded anti-tobacco contributions, with the entire world in a rapid and almost for free. If you have followed me on the blog previously you know that Dizza Tobak is a project that we run together with SAMBA and A Non Smoking Generation with the purpose of eliminating tobacco usage. Some of my favourite contributions this year are:

- Love this way to die?

- Svart sot och död

- Kriget mot tobak

and of course still the Flash Mob at the Central Station last year protesting to the fact that 18 people die from tobacco each and every day in Sweden…

I also presented the Can-You-Feel-My-Pain (CYFMP) initiative where we in collaboration with, among others, Patient Advocacy Groups from all over Europe have utilized a number of different social media platforms in order to raise public awareness of chronic pain. Take part of the initiative through the following links:

- CYFMP on Facebook

- CYFMP on Twitter

- CYFMP on Flickr

- CYFMP on Twibbon

A good conference with interesting discussions on a hot topic. I am sure the use of social media in health care (and elsewhere of course) will explode for the simple reason that the opportunities are so great. But just remember that there are risks of course - but in my opinion those risks are definitely manageable.

Opportunities...

Risks...

An Enterprise 2020 Company - what is that?

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CSR Sweden arranged a breakfast seminar today where CSR Europe’s Executive President Stefan Crets presented the “Enterprise 2020 Initiative“.

Stefan Crets, CSR Europe

In Stefan Crets’ words, “CSR Europe is not a lobbying organization, and it is not a think tank. It is a platform for a change of society and business practices based on sharing and further development of CSR best practices and knowledge with peers and stakeholders”. And for sure, such a platform is really needed. A focus on sharing practical experiences, rather than just theroretical and sometimes even just semantic issues, is definitely welcome. 

And I have to say, that I really like the initiative taken by CSR Europe on building “Enterprise 2020 Companies”. So what is an Enterprise 2020 Company?

A company must develop its business strategies based on an understanding on how the world will look like in the future. Let’s say 2020. How will trends such as increasing globalisation, demographic change, natural resource scarcity, technology acceleration, global health challenges and social divisions shape business and society? How will the trends influence the capacity of the company and the organisation to create value that contributes to economic, societal and environmental progress?

Global Policy Development

In order to fully understand how these global challenges affect business strategies companies also need to understand how those trends affect Global Policy Developments, e.g. ISO 26000, UN Global Compact, GRI on the international level and on a European level e.g. the Europe 2020 Strategy, New EU Communication on CSR (due October 2011), and a legislative proposal on CSR Reporting (due 2012).

EU Policy Development

Stefan Crets describes an Enterprise 2020 company as a company that has fully integrated CSR into its business strategies, so business contributes to a SMART, SUSTAINABLE, and INCLUSIVE growth. In order to be successful, social innovation is a key. Social innovation means new ideas, business models, and products and services resolving existing sustainable challenges such as demographic change, human rights violations, finacial crise, environmental degradation, and poverty.

These ideas is nicely aligned with the “more-than-medication”-strategy for the pharmaceutical industry that I have elaborated upon previously here at the blog:

- The need to fully integrate the CSR startegies into the business strategies of the company (see e.g. blog post from March 29, 2010 (it is in Swedish, sorry for that!))

- 4 steps to a sustainable use of pharmaceuticals (see e.g. blog post from Feb 8, 2011)

- The need for, and opportunities with, social innovation (see e.g. blog post from April 8, 2011)

Enterprise 2020 Company - well, we are not there yet, but we are moving in the right direction…