Fighting the prescription data war - why I think it makes no sense..

Here is the deal - pharma companies, benefit managers, insurance companies and data mining companies cannot sell information. Fair enough.

Now I am a drug company sales person/Information miner. This particular law has made it harder for me to find out exact information on who is prescribing what. But I want to push for drug sales. I now have a drug in the market, and I need to find out who I should push, so they sell more of mine.

Here is a picture,

1. I have my own drugs distribution channel. At one level or the other, I know that my drug for a special Californian disease, "Springtime blues" has been up in sales, just not as much as I want it to be. There is only one other drug out in the market, it is called, "Pretend sunshine". Now, I know that enough Californians are feeling dizzy from the lack of sunshine in their lives this spring (like last spring, and you know, that is important). I know that I could be selling 100 gazillions of the drug, as opposed to the 80 gazillions I currently manage. I know my points of exit, I know where the hospitals are, I know where the specialists are, who the specialists are, and who is selling the drug.

Well, maybe not to that accuracy, but hey, why would someone in Mojave have springtime blues? So I concentrate on Nothern California. I zone in on the Bay Area. I split them up into regions. I know which pharmas used my drug channels. Maybe, I can even find out where the trucks drop them off, maybe not...

I can actually define a strategy to tell you how, with a certain degree of accuracy, if you had a pre - existing drug distribution channel of your own, you could predict who is prescribing and who is not, in general.

After all, you take your chances with Dr. Dolittle, and walk into his office, find him prescribing your drug, and you know, its gotta be Dr. Schweitzer next door, who is not prescribing your drug.

You are a salesman. When was your job easy?

So, really, who is this law helping? Why complicate the situation as it is? Why do we need to live by the mythical assumption that we "can" hold off information and data? Someone needs to convince me..

If you don't have a drug, what do you do. Unfortunately, you can just drop by the Grannies' tea club and find out what they are all raving about. Now, that, there is the point where you need to stop data leaks....