Remarks by Tony Zook, President & CEO AstraZeneca US
At the World Healthcare Innovation Conference
Washington, DC
November 3, 2006

Personalizing the Healthcare Experience

As a pharmaceutical company, people know AstraZeneca by the medicines we make. Some of those medicines you may have heard of.

• They include NEXIUM^®, the “Purple Pill,” for problems associated with acid reflux disease;
• SEROQUEL^® for treating bipolar disorder and schizophrenia; 
• ARIMIDEX^® for breast cancer; and
• CRESTOR^® for treating high cholesterol.
  

These drugs help people live healthier lives. And, whether it is through our own pipeline or through collaborations with other partners, we are committed to finding new medicines for illnesses we have yet to crack, like Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

But what exactly does the world expect from a pharmaceutical company?

• They want a single pill to meet an unmet need.
• They want it to immediately improve a condition. 
• They don’t want side effects. 
• And, of course, they want it to be inexpensive.
  

Well, we want that too.

We invest billions of dollars to help make this happen. In R&D, we’re constantly optimizing this process to find new breakthrough discoveries. But there are inherent challenges in this process.

• On average, an estimated one out of every 5,000 new chemical compounds that are developed actually makes it to the marketplace to benefit people.
• And to develop that one medicine—not to test the other 4,999—costs an average of $800 million dollars and takes more than 10 years.
  

This means that the creation of that single, perfect pill will continue to take massive dedication and dollars.

Even as we strive to create this perfect pill, we can enhance the healthcare experience in three ways:

ONE: Maximize the benefits of medicines

TWO: Improve communication across the many points of healthcare

THREE: Apply innovations in technology to increase efficiencies

Advances made in the lab cannot benefit people without actions taken outside the lab, such as

• Ensuring that medicines are used appropriately as well as
• Improving access to and the affordability of medicines.
  

We’re working on both. In fact, part of AstraZeneca’s core commitment to patients is to enable those who can’t afford our medicines to get them, regardless of their ability to pay.

That’s why we announced this week that as of November 15^th, a family of four, earning $60,000 dollars or less, or individuals, earning $30,000 dollars or less—who do not have prescription drug coverage—can get their AstraZeneca medicines for free.

• That’s approximately 300 percent above the federal poverty level.
• These new changes allow us to help the middle class, as well as those with lower incomes, who don’t have prescription coverage, get the medicines they need to stay healthy.
  

This change to our AstraZeneca Patient Assistance Program is estimated to help an additional 3.8 million people,

• Bringing the total population that may qualify for the program to at least 25.7 million people.

In addition to providing medicines free of charge, this program provides one-on-one education and information to help individuals identify and access other health and drug coverage or assistance programs for which they may be eligible, including connecting patients with other manufacturer’s patient assistance programs if needed.

We’re also working to simplify our contact with patients. It’s the simple things—that sometimes matter to people.

• Like dialing our 1-800 number for a patient assistance program – wouldn’t it be nice if you actually talked to a person instead of the automated, “dial one for this… dial two for that…”
• At AstraZeneca, you can get a live person.
  

We live in a world of technological wonders, and advances in information and communication technology are coming fast and furious. To contribute to people’s health in the most meaningful way, we’re working to help shape and apply new technologies in a variety of ways.

• This opens opportunities for those in the pharmaceutical industry to work more closely with people who share our interest in making a big difference in healthcare today.
• And fortunately, there are endless ways for the pharmaceutical industry—in partnership with physicians, advocates and payors—for example, to use sophisticated technologies, with the end goal, of advancing patient health.

These technologies will help us address some of the age-old issues that we, as an industry, have grappled with for years.

• In the past, everybody tried to play with the concept of disease management. It was a good idea.
• But the healthcare infrastructure was still fragmented—you couldn’t really track the benefit of a product—or an innovation. And it fell on its own weight.
• The same thing happened with patients’ lack of adherence, a serious challenge to anyone who works in the pharmaceutical industry as well as health professionals who are managing disease.
• People threw their hands in the air and said, “We can’t deal with compliance and adherence with patients because any action we take won’t be scalable. We just can’t reach enough people, in a real way.”

Today’s society is much more informed, much more connected through the Internet. Information management through medical records and other types of patient transfers is a reality.

• Today, one in four doctors uses electronic health records in some capacity.
• Baby boomers are now able to create personal health records and communicate electronically with doctors on behalf of their aging parents, even from remote locations.

We think this type of technology application is critical.

• That’s why we made a $1 million dollar contribution to the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans to help build a state-of-the-art telemedicine system for six community medical sites.
• This will allow professionals at the main campus of the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans to have two-way, real-time visual and verbal communication with the community-based sites, which will result in easier and quicker accessibility between doctors and patients.

In the near future, Americans will be able to access electronic health records from anywhere in the country. If an emergency takes place while you are on vacation, or away from your hometown, the hospital will be able to access your complete medical history instantaneously.

When that day comes, there will be tremendous application in terms of what our industry can do to help patients get the full benefits of medicines.

Now it’s one thing to know that we have to be ready to take advantage of the changes that are heading our way, especially since one of our biggest challenges ahead will be managing an aging population. And it’s quite another thing to actually be ready to take advantage of those changes in order to benefit patient health—and personalize healthcare as never before.

AstraZeneca is ready, both internally through our research and development function and externally through collaborations.

We’re acting upon new ways to improve patient health through new medicine and new behaviors.

We’ve also joined forces with other pharmaceutical companies and government agencies, like the Food & Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health, to form the Biomarker Consortium.

• All these groups have come together to identify biomarkers, which are biologically-derived indicators of a process or condition.
• If, together, we can identify the best biomarkers, we can collectively begin to develop medicines and therapies that can target diseases for which there are no effective responses.

That’s the high-science point of view. Let me bring it down to what this means to the patient.

Specifically, how can we make medicine more meaningful and personal through technology for people?

About a year ago, discussions at AstraZeneca began heating up about the need to embrace, understand and manage the constantly changing dynamics of consumer demands and technology developments.

• These discussions, in turn, quickly evolved into strategy sessions. Eventually, a decision was made to create a new kind of R&D function that would leverage the skills and expertise of diverse industries outside of pharmaceuticals, and allow us to tackle challenging healthcare problems in unique ways.
• We understood and agreed that the most meaningful results would be best achieved by working with others, who shared our vision of a better healthcare future.

And so the AstraZeneca Healthcare Innovation Center was born – a dedicated, U.S., commercial operation charged with creating new partnership ventures that use technology to discover, incubate and bring to market new services and systems that improve healthcare and maximize the benefits of our medicines for the people who need them.

• Our Healthcare Innovation Center is a “virtual laboratory” where we work with partners from diverse industries and leverage each other’s expertise to generate ideas, conduct research and experiments and implement pilot projects.
• It’s the commercial counterpart, if you will, to our pharmaceutical R&D function.

Though all of our work in this area is in the early-stages of development, it’s exciting to note the innovative ways we are planning to use technology to maximize the benefits of treatment for patients.

So, let me tell you about one of the projects currently under way, which truly gets to the heart of what “personalizing the healthcare experience means.”

• Imagine a tool that’s designed to understand one of the greatest mysteries of all – that is, how our personality affects us when we become patients.
• What if the tool could predict how you’ll react to “doctors orders?” What if the tool could determine, in advance, what you’re likely to do when told to take a new medicine or to alter your diet?
• And what if your physicians had this type of information so they could create a personalized roadmap to counsel and treat you, based on your healthcare personality type?

At AstraZeneca, we’ve joined forces with the University of Miami and Humana to evaluate and analyze a predictive tool that studies patient behavior, specifically regarding lipid-lowering medication adherence in patients with multiple chronic conditions. This tool is called Health Personality Assessment™ or HPA™ for short.

• This tool can show whether patients actually follow their doctor’s orders—whether they’re compliant with their medicines.
• We’d like to think that the majority of patients are what we call “Healthcare Smart”—that is, they follow their doctor’s instructions to the “T”.
• But we know that’s not the case.

Sadly, a lot of people don’t comply with doctors’ orders. It is estimated that 125,000 people with treatable ailments die each year simply because they do not take prescribed medications properly or they skip them altogether.

That’s why it’s so important to make sure people take their medications or follow their treatment regimens as directed.

We are focused on developing tools like this to help doctors better communicate with their patients, because, ideally, a patient and doctor should work together as a team to ensure the most effective medical care has been brought forward.

While innovation, especially in pharmaceuticals, has unlimited possibilities, none of it matters if patients do not have access to the medicines they need or can’t afford them once they are available. So we are reexamining the entire experience of using the medicines we make to ensure that it’s as complete and beneficial as possible.

I talked earlier about what we’re doing to help people who can’t afford their medicines.

• Accessing healthcare is also a problem for many patients, and up until last year, our country’s senior population didn’t have access to prescription drug coverage.
• But then came Medicare Part-D, a program, which to date, has ensured that more than 38 million patients have prescription drug coverage.

Before the introduction of this program, it was estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the people over 65 years of age had no drug coverage.

• Today, because of the success of Part-D, only 10 percent of this population lacks coverage.
• The Medicare Modernization Act is the single biggest change in healthcare delivered by the U.S. government in nearly forty years and its impact has already been felt by millions of Americans throughout the country.
• This is why AstraZeneca remains committed to educating people about this important benefit.

We partnered with the National Council on the Aging and the Access to Benefits Coalition to provide an educational initiative called My Medicare Matters.

• This is a comprehensive, community-based initiative that already has helped patients and their families across the country learn about the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit.
• During the first-ever Medicare Part D enrollment period, My Medicare Matters sponsored more than 3,100 events and provided one-on-one assistance to more than 210,000 people, helping them to understand the new coverage. More than 4 million used the campaign Web site.

We are planning to announce that together with the National Council on Aging, we will donate hundreds of lap-top computers to local community groups who are dedicated to providing support to people seeking Medicare Part-D coverage. Talk about technology at work.

The idea of more personal healthcare is key to how we see our future.

But we walk a fine line in the pharmaceutical industry: We want to use technology, which is thought of by society as a cold, impersonal medium, to advance our ability to positively affect people’s health. At the same time, we at AstraZeneca want to make people’s healthcare experiences warmer and more personal.

These two concepts are not mutually exclusive – we can use technology in our work and we can provide a personal and meaningful healthcare experience. In fact, our ability to recreate the patient experience of tomorrow and meet the world’s and our own expectations, are based on how we recreate our relationship with and understanding of technology and people today.