HDMA honors pharmaceutical manufacturers with DIANA awards

PEAPACK, N.J. The Healthcare Distribution Management Association recently awarded its Distribution Industry Awards For Notable Achievements in Healthcare. The association has been honoring manufacturers of pharmaceutical and consumer products for excellence in new product introductions, product promotions and their overall business practices with HDMA healthcare distributors for almost 50 years.

One of the winners, Greenstone Ltd., was awarded Best Overall Generic Pharmaceutical Products Manufacturer in the over $100 million-sales category. This is the second consecutive year the Pfizer subsidiary has won the award. The finalists in this category were Qualitest Pharmaceuticals and Watson Labs, a Watson Pharma subsidiary.

Adams Respiratory Therapeutics won the DIANA in the over-the-counter category for Best New Product Introduction/Promotion, for Children’s Mucinex. The company also took home a win for the Best Overall Consumer Products Manufacturer in the more than $10 million range. The two finalists were Novartis and Schering-Plough.

Other winners included:

• Johnson & Johnson — Best New Product Introduction/Promotion in the health and beauty care category, for K-Y Intrigue.
• Pfizer — Best New Product Introduction/Promotion in the branded pharmaceutical products category, for the smoking cessation drug Chantix.
• AstraZeneca — Best Overall Branded Pharmaceutical Products Manufacturer in the over $300 million sales category. Finalists in this category were Boehringer Ingelheim and Alcon Labs.

Winners with smaller sales to distributors—less than $100 million in most cases—were Cara, Dr. Reddy’s and Reliant, for the Overall, Generic and Branded categories, respectively. Finalists in these three categories included, respectively, Omron Healthcare, Upsher-Smith Labs and Novo Nordisk.

Judges in these categories looked for a number of criteria, including high product service levels, a product line and marketing plan that contributed to sales growth, and support of distributor promotional programs.

The winners were honored at the HDMA’s 2008 Annual Leadership Forum Awards Banquet on Nov. 7, in National Harbor, Md. Other winners can be found at the association’s Web site by clicking here.