MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd, the wholly owned subsidiary of the US-based Merck & Co Inc, is planning to initiate a first of its kind integrated disease management programme for marketing its newly launched once-daily, type 2 diabetes tablet, Januvia, in India.

The company is currently finalising talks with doctors to work along with them offering awareness, information and support services to the patient community for cent per cent result in diabetes treatment. The system is designed to work along with doctors, with their consent, to give more disease management information to the patient community and the company is expected to initiate the programme within next three months, informed company officials.

"Under the programme, we will have discussion with the doctors to scientifically create a partnership and with the consent of the doctors, we would provide our disease management service to their patients. This is first of its kind and has never done in this country. Beyond marketing the product in an affordable price, we are looking to provide more value to the patient through the service," said Naveen Rao, managing director, MSD Pharmaceuticals.

The company has been following this strategy in some other countries on selected products, he added. For instance, the company has introduced the integrated disease management system in Spain for children with Asthma with services including alerting the mothers about the climatic conditions which will trigger asthma in paediatric patients. The company will use its well established information management system enabled with IT to handle the programme in 60 cities, where the products would be launched in the first stage.

The company currently has a team of 200 staff for marketing Januvia in the country and would ramp up the field force according to the quantity of response to the new programme. "We are going through various medical and legal procedures prior to the introduction of the programme," added Rao.

Januvia is the first DPP-4 inhibitor distinct from that of any currently available class of glucose-lowering agents, using a novel pathway, Incretin, to control insulin in human body with less reported usual side effects hypoglycaemia and weight gearing, informed Rao.

The company, which has announced its launching pipeline with diabetes, dyslipidemia, cervical cancer and diarrhoea, is expecting the launch of its cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil as next in product launching pipeline. However, MSD has not received drug approval from DCGI yet, added the spokesperson. The company, which is looking forward to be one among the top five pharma companies in the country, is looking for more partnerships in research and development segment. It has also announced its plans to launch at least one product in every six months for the next five years, and the growth of the company in next five years would be 100 per cent every year, informed Rao.