Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »January 15, 2006 — CIO —
As an undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, Aaron Graham saw firsthand how counterfeit drugs can slip into the pharmaceutical supply chain. Graham, now VP and chief security officer for Purdue Pharma, once posed as the manager of an "institutional pharmacy" selling drugs at a discount to secondary wholesalers who were then supposed to sell them to nursing homes. Soon after he began, his phone started ringing. Dozens of smaller pharmaceutical wholesale companies were calling, desperate to buy his drugs. These secondary or "gray market" wholesalers scour the country and the world for low-price drugs they can sell back to major wholesalers for a profit. In addition to trawling for institutional pharmacies, some secondary wholesalers have been known to purchase counterfeit drugs from criminal organizations in places such as China, Thailand or Colombia.
Graham, who was part of a two-year FDA sting operation known as "operation gray pill," helped expose a system in which large and small wholesalers were taking advantage of multitiered pricing in the industry. Prescription drugs are sold at discounts to subsidized groups such as nursing homes and also exported at lower prices. Graham and his colleagues found that these lower-priced drugs are sometimes smuggled back into the country and sold to large wholesalers for a profit. These multiple steps, in which a drug can bounce back and forth from distributor to distributor, create a supply chain that is complex, convoluted and, at times, vulnerable. The more frequently a drug changes hands, the greater the chance that counterfeit or diverted drugs can enter the legitimate supply chain.
Such a porous supply chain poses hazards to patients—thousands of people worldwide die every year from ingesting fake drugs—and it costs the pharmaceutical industry an estimated $46 billion a year in lost profits. The World Health Organization (WHO) in a recent study said that counterfeit drugs represent more than 10 percent of global sales. And in 2004, the FDA reported that the number of its investigations of counterfeit drugs rose by 150 percent from the previous year as a growing number of criminal groups take advantage of high profits and penalties that are less severe than those for selling illegal narcotics such as heroin or cocaine.
"Prescription drugs pass through so many hands before they reach the pharmacy, there is no way to know where they all come from," says Graham, who came to Purdue in 2002. "Laws on the books today are not effective in keeping counterfeit drugs out of the supply chain."