pharmanaming

​​Unlike generic names, a brand name isn't tied to particular suffixes, which allows for more creativity.

The name is meant to be representative of the drug in some way, ranging from abstract ideas, tonality, strong sound or gentle sound. It can be imagery. You hear a word and it brings something positive to mind, or a nice association that isn’t a claim. Several rules apply to developing the brand name for medications. For starters, the name can’t make an overt claim about what it does, nor can it be promotional. It should avoid any use of generic name stems and everything should be done to avoid confusion.

The process roughly works like this

Readge's Pharmanaming team begins with establishing the brand's positioning, writes a brand story, determines the framework conditions with the client's regulatory department and a place and relation in the product portfolio, sets the schedule, who is involved, what submission procedure will be followed (FDA, EMA, DCP or CP), involves the different countries if necessary and investigates possible creative routes. When all that is done and there is a good picture of the goal we want to get to, potential lists of hundreds of names are created, and based on all kinds of checks and searches these lists will need to be dramatically reduced. In the end, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will review only one proposed name at a time, and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will review only two.

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The narrowing-down process begins with several checks and surveys for further elimination, that include:

• Trademark screening and clearance in the relevant classes (mostly 5 and 10). A team of attorneys scrutinizes each name to make sure that name is truly unique. All companies developing drug brands have to be diligent that it’s not getting too close to other company's brand names, or generic names.

• Checks in the INN (International Non-proprietary Names) published registers by the World Health Organisation

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• Pharma in Use checks in the Worldwide Intellectual Property Organisation's register (WIPO)

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• Domain name and social media availability checks, for defensive reasons. Far from all brands are registered, while there are names used online with which you do not want to be associated 

• Linguistic checks. Does the drug name translate ok? The goal is to have a product that is appealing on a global scale, so it’s important to make sure it sounds and reads okay, regardless of the language or dialect. The brand name is checked in major world languages to make sure the name in its entirety does not mean or imply a word or phrase that would be inappropriate or embarrassing.

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• Safety checks for interpretation during the prescription process. Safety is the major focus in naming drugs. If one medication name is confused with another, the mistake could have serious consequences. To avoid any confusion, make sure that the proposed names do not look or sound like another that when coupled with an analysis of similar prescribing characteristics (dose strength, frequency, route of administration, etc.) could produce a medication dispensing error. A prescription simulation interpretation tests with verbal orders, computer entry orders, and handwriting to see if the name could be confused with another when written in a doctor’s potentially messy script. 

• Perception checks among health care professionals, to gauge how they respond to the different names, inquiring about areas such as safety as well as general likeability of the way the word looks, sounds and how memorable it is.