Chapter 2 emphasizes relationships with customers and with partners. PharmEvo came up with the brilliant insight that it could view its customers, healthcare professionals including doctors, as its partners, and would help them with leadership and managerial training. This led to the establishment of the Institute of Leadership Excellence (ILE) and the partial positioning of the company around it. The entire range of its leadership programs is subsumed under its CSR umbrella. The company believes that its spectacular growth has come in part from the ILE- based training (Dr. Aamir Khan, Case Advisor).
In research published on the Pakistani healthcare sector by the Agha Khan University titled “Leadership in Healthcare is a neglected issue: A call for action”, the author states “There is a clear lack of focus on developing leadership skills and training programs in healthcare professions, despite the evidence of benefits of such training.”
The need of the hour is to introduce smart solutions to effectively manage the pressing challenges burdening the healthcare structure. Also, critically important is the issue of training and capacity building of healthcare professionals that remains largely unaddressed.
To address this gap, and realizing the gravity of the issue, Mr. Syed Jamshed Ahmed, the CEO of PharmEvo channeled forces to start working extensively for the training and capacity building of healthcare professionals in Pakistan.
Since its inception in 1999, PharmEvo has been known for their strong CSR initiatives, cause-based marketing, and social endeavors for the community at large. The purposeful CSR initiatives by PharmEvo reflect their commitment for the betterment of Doctors, Healthcare Professionals, Medical institutions and all their key stakeholders. With a transformational journey, spanning over an exciting two decades, PharmEvo’s passion for relentless growth and a laser focus on socially responsible marketing has propelled them among the top 20 Pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan.
Table 1: PharmEvo’s Journey with major Achievements
2000 – First flagship product was launched 2001 – Made it to the top 100 companies in IMS ranking 2002 – Formulation license acquisition from Ministry of Health, Pakistan 2003 – Manufacturing plant was established, and top of the line cardiology product was launched 2006 – The Global journey began (now operating in 10 countries) Made it to the top 50 companies. 2008 – Received health and environment national excellence award2014 – Made it to top 24 Pharma companies of Pakistan: Launched the1st CSR project with two divisions (Drug and Poison Info Centre + Capacity Building Trainings and Workshops) 2015 – Forayed into digital marketing– developed customized modern mobile applications for healthcare professional (HCPs) and Medical Societies 2016 – Launched Pakistan’s first webinar portal for HCPs (MEDWEB) – Care through Technology 2017 – Launched Institute of Leadership Excellence (reinvent yourself) for training and development of HCPs 2018 – Made it to the top 20 Pharma companies of Pakistan 2019 – Nutraceutical facility set up and Global Generics and Biosimilar Award for Business Development of the year 2000 – First flagship product was launched 2001 – Made it to the top 100 companies in IMS ranking 2002 – Formulation license acquisition from Ministry of Health, Pakistan 2003 – Manufacturing plant was established, and top of the line cardiology product was launched 2006 – The Global journey began (now operating in 10 countries) Made it to the top 50 companies. 2008 – Received health and environment national excellence award2014 – Made it to top 24 Pharma companies of Pakistan: Launched the1st CSR project with two divisions (Drug and Poison Info Centre + Capacity Building Trainings and Workshops) 2015 – Forayed into digital marketing– developed customized modern mobile applications for healthcare professional (HCPs) and Medical Societies 2016 – Launched Pakistan’s first webinar portal for HCPs (MEDWEB) – Care through Technology 2017 – Launched Institute of Leadership Excellence (reinvent yourself) for training and development of HCPs 2018 – Made it to the top 20 Pharma companies of Pakistan 2019 – Nutraceutical facility set up and Global Generics and Biosimilar Award for Business Development of the year
The company’s product portfolio includes Pharmaceuticals, Nutraceuticals, Nutrition products and Medical Devices with a network of affiliates and partners in Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America Markets. PharmEvo is actively contributing to the Cardiovascular, Orthopedics, Respiratory, Anti-Infectious, and Endocrinology segments. The leading brands of PharmEvo include Lowplat (prevent heart attacks and strokes), Gouric (keeps uric acid levels from getting to high in people with gout), X-plended (helps lower "bad" cholesterol and fats), Orslim (with doctor advice and exercise helps lose weight) and Inosita (helps control high blood sugar).
Additionally, the company runs five active CSR units including Clinision (An initiative to provide support for practicing Health Care Professionals in clinical and research-driven activities), e-Dr (tech-driven & value-added services to Doctors, Healthcare Organizations & Institutions), PharmAssist (An information-sharing platform for Pharmacists and HCPs on drug & poison information, medicine usage & side effects and patient counselling), Jahan-e-Maseeha (A literary platform established to promote literature and make the community informed, well-read and enlightened) and Institute of Leadership Excellence (An initiative for the development & capacity building of Healthcare Professionals through premium leadership programs and workshops).
Throughout the last few years, PharmEvo has remained instrumental in changing the way healthcare is delivered and how capacity building of healthcare professionals is carried out. Embracing technology proactively and creating value in the Digital Health space with an innovative mindset, under their e-Dr initiative PharmEvo introduced Mobile Apps, Evo Telemedicine, MedWeb, Health Portals, Evo-Clinics, Virtual Training and development, e Clinic and e-Detailing. In 2015, PharmEvo ventured ahead to launch an e-health facility, Pakistan’s first virtual hospital offering tele-medicines services to patients across Pakistan with the slogan: Evo tele-medicine – connect with your patients virtually without compromising on the core values of Integrity, Trust, Respect, Ethics and Excellence.
Establishment of the Institute of Leadership Excellence (ILE)
“Doctors are healers but not the best managers. They are trained to cure but not trained to manage resources efficiently” – CEO PharmEvo. The company realized that health care professionals (HCPs) including medical doctors, nursing and midwifery professionals, dentists and pharmacists lack the management skills that are equally important as their medical and technical skills. Hence the need was to develop a structured Learning & Development unit to train the doctors, healthcare organizations and medical institutions. This led to the establishment of the ‘Institute of Leadership Excellence (ILE)’ in 2017, an initiative for the development and capacity building of Healthcare Professionals through premium leadership programs and workshops. The primary focus of the initiative is to train the current health professionals on premium leadership programs.
According to the NHS Academy of Leaders (UK), traits such as Emotional Expressiveness, Self-Confidence, Self-Determination, Freedom from Internal Conflict and Communication Skills are crucial for any leader, especially Healthcare Leaders. Although the medical professionals of Pakistan are some of the best technically skilled among the world, they do fall behind in these essential soft skills. ILE works with Healthcare Professionals and helps them turn into visionary leaders who can create value in the healthcare ecosystem.
‘7 Habits of Successful People’
ILE became the first platform in Pakistan to be certified by the Franklin Covey institute for ‘7 Habits of Successful People’ training. ILE has a Leaders’ Club for healthcare executives to prepare the learning material. PharmEvo has collaborated with Talisium to offer leadership courses tailored for healthcare professionals from prestigious institutes such as Royal College of Physicians (UK), NHS Academy of Leaders (UK) including others.
The institute has engaged over 70 of the top healthcare providing institutions such as Dow University Hospital, Mayo Hospital, National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), King Edward Medical University among others where the complete healthcare teams have been trained on leadership and capacity building. Since its inception, 550+ healthcare providers have been trained through ILE on various topics such as Can MEDS (Physicians Competency Framework), 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Certified by the Franklin Covey USA), Excellence in Execution, Leadership in Healthcare, and Presentation & Communication Skills.
The increase in the number of attendees demonstrates the success of these programs and the hard work of the team who reached out to executives of medical institutes and created awareness on the multiple and tangible learning outcomes of the ILE programs. The efforts were highly appreciated by the diverse audience.
Thoroughly enjoyed the program, such programs will definitely aid to get maximum results and productivity at Tabba. – Dr. Lubna Mustaque, Head of Patient Safety & Quality Assurance, Tabba Heart Institute.
Attendees appreciated the uniqueness of the program in particular,
“A new dimension for the medical people to know some new directions besides their interaction with books and patients”. – Prof. Syed Saud Hasan, Professor Pharmacology, Dow University of Health Sciences
“This program did a great job providing actionable concepts in a way that encouraged instant application. I know how I will implement the concepts because I already did it in the training”. – Prof. Uzma Bukhari, Professor Histopathology, Dow University of Health Sciences
Today about 18,000 healthcare professionals are a part of the Institute of Leadership Excellence and its offerings benefitting from the training on leadership aspects:
“The workshop provided good self and cultural assessment and awareness regarding various styles of leadership”. – Kamran Iqbal, COO, SINA Health, Education & Welfare Trust
These trainings and focused programs led to visible in improvements in the health outcome and an increase in quality of healthcare provided by inspiring the HCPs in multiple ways;
“This was a hands-on, thought provoking program that left me inspired; feeling much more influential with many action-able takeaways I can apply immediately. Thoroughly enjoyed!” – Prof. Ambrina Qureshi, Professor Community Dentistry, Dow University of Health Sciences
“A new dimension for the medical people to know some new directions besides their interaction with books and patients”. – Prof. Syed Saud Hasan, Professor Pharmacology, Dow University of Health Sciences
Like all other fields, the ILE activities also faced a halt in the wake of the pandemic. The healthcare infrastructure went into emergency mode to prevent chaos from erupting during the first wave. To ensure that the programs keep working, virtual trainings were planned and offered to the HCPs. This meant re-drafting the programs in such a manner that they could be successfully executed online in the absence of physical trainings. This also meant that the HCPs had to be convinced to fit the trainings with their busy schedule and reiterate the importance of leadership skills necessary for them and their hospitals, institutions, and most of all the patients.
The challenges were tackled as evident from an attendee’s feedback:
“A well-arranged and well-delivered two-day program. It will undoubtedly be very helpful in my personal and professional development. I would love to attend such programs in future.” - Dr. Irfan Chandna, Cardiologist, Tabba Heart Institute
The Impact of ILE
After undergoing one of leadership training modules of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a leading healthcare organization recorded 40% improvement in employee productivity. Through ILE, medical institutions were aided in improving service delivery, patient safety and attain cost-efficiency. These results were achieved by trainings such as Leadership Grid that helped improve collaboration and organizational leadership that resulted in better morale of workforce. This eventually led to lower turnover rates in critical healthcare domains and improved intra-organization communication. Training on “7 habits of highly effective people” aided in personal development of interpersonal and intrapersonal skills of individuals the “Excellence in Execution” training centered on strategy formulation and strategy execution that helped achieve organizational efficiency, resource optimization and cost reduction. The training on Communication & Presentation skills helped executives in better resource allocation for their organizations as a large number of medical institutes belong to the social sector.
Furthermore, it was further observed that the sales trend in the brick (a term in pharmaceutical industry used to denote an area of sales or marketing activities) of an institution where a training took place, recorded an average increase of 4.5% (up to 3 months post training) compared to the previous months.
At the time of ILE’s formation in 2017, the PharmEvo sales stood at PKR 379 million. After the launch of ILE, sales for the next financial year closed at PKR 444,937,693 with a growth of 17% and the year after registered a growth of 18% for a total amount of PKR 523,206,454. The financial year 2019-2020 was affected due to COVID-19 yet the company still registered a 10% growth closing the year at PKR 577,525,255. As for the current fiscal year, the sales have reached the highest ever in the company’s history.
ILE has established Center of Healthcare Leadership (CoHL) in leading healthcare institutions of Pakistan including Jinnah Sindh Medical University, Dow University of Health Sciences, Rawalpindi Medical University (RMU) and Rashid Latif Medical College. ILE plans to establish CoHLs in 100 institutes across Pakistan by 2026 by employing an adequate number of training personnel, thereby creating an estimated 500 jobs as a result. ILE also provides its members articles from leading leadership magazines such as Harvard Business Review, American Association for Physician Leadership among others, organizes leadership talks of leading experts of healthcare fraternity and ensures peer engagement for skill development through the website http://www.ile.guru.
The PharmEvo’s journey of success with ethical values at the core is continuing to make its mark on both the healthcare being provided in Pakistan, and on the welfare of the Pakistani community through its CSR initiatives, cause-based marketing, and social endeavors. PharmEvo remains especially proud of its efforts to train Pakistan’s healthcare professionals in leadership and in managerial abilities.
Questions to stimulate conversation on the case
- What factors motivated PharmEvo to indulge into the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities?
- Is ILE as a corporate social responsibilities (CSR) move justified by PharmEvo?
- What is your take on annual growth percentages cited in the case study? Do you see any connection of PharmEvo’s growth with ILE establishment?
- In your view what is connection between a brand’s image and corporate social responsibility activities carried out by the companies?
- Suggest few alternate corporate social responsibility initiatives to companies working in healthcare sector.
Links and media
Website: https://pharmevo.biz/