Pharmaceutical company 4BIO, sold by RD to the Profarma Group, repositions itself with a focus on hospitals and plans

4BIO, the high-cost medicine arm of the Profarma Group, is changing its customer profile and has expanded its logistics network to keep up with a market in which the patient is no longer the one who pays, says the company's vice-president, Vilson Schvartzman.

The company, created to serve the end consumer, will start selling more to hospitals, clinics and health plan operators, and will go from two to seven distribution centers by the end of the year.

For Schvartzman, the main transformation is the paying source. According to him, today it is difficult for a high-cost product not to be paid for by a health plan or the government. The executive estimates the market outside pharmacies that passes through distributors at R$60 billion per year.

Sales to patients have not ended, but they have changed, he says. Regulations forced operators to pay for oral medicines, especially oncology, and they need someone to send the product to the beneficiary's home, in what is called a triangular sale.

The two centers that 4BIO maintains, in Pernambuco and São Paulo, are dedicated to B2P (company to patient), whether the patient pays out of pocket or the operator pays. Schvartzman says that the company has 25% to 28% of this market and that there is still room to grow.

Oncology is the main line. The executive states that the segment is growing 12% to 15% per year, compared to 6% to 7% for pharmaceutical retail, and that 45% of the launches planned for the next five years are oncology medicines. The goal is for the company, currently stronger in terms of operators, to also be identified as a distributor of oncology treatment for clinics.

In vaccines, the application is no longer restricted to clinics and reaches laboratories and pharmacies, and the calendar now includes immunizations for adults, not just children.

The company also targets rare diseases, in which it does little, but which have medications costing up to R$4 million per year per patient. For Schvartzman, preventive medicine also tends to gain space.

To adapt, 4BIO opened five centers: Rio de Janeiro, already opened, Espírito Santo, Rio Grande do Sul, Distrito Federal and a second in São Paulo, aimed at hospitals, clinics and operators.

The investment is R$20 million. Units are 1,500 to 2,000 square feet and contain 500 items.

The contribution comes from the cash of the Profarma Group, which purchased 4BIO from RD (Raia Drogasil) for R$600 million. The strategy now is to grow organically, with the goal of doubling market share.