The company has formed a “strategic partnership” with inVentiv Health , who does a lot of outsourcing for big Pharma, earlier this year, so perhaps some the sales and marketing slated for sales will be moving in this direction. Merck is not the only company investigating and pursuing this direction...
It appears from the article that the move is generated more towards called made on family practice physicians, as vaccines or drugs marketed to oncologists, ophthalmologists, or dermatologists will still be handled by in house sales representatives, so specialty drug representatives appear to be safe...
The meaning of advantage is below. Who knows what might be uncovered next as this may or may not be just a Merck issue, but as documents and other items of years past surface, this is what we have, sell, sell, sell, and it's perhaps not unlikely that some of these items and issues could exist...
Update: Are 3 minds better than one? It certainly appears this could be the case, at least when it comes to clinical trials and getting the right type of participants to enroll and some forecasting to make sure the drugs will succeed. What is the target here, the big crystal...