Glaxo chief seeks guidance from health systems

(Reuters) - Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline plans to give government healthcare systems a say in deciding which drugs advance in its research pipeline, Chief Executive Andrew Witty told The Wall Street Journal.

The effort is part of Witty's drive to help the world's second-largest drug maker adapt to a tough pharmaceutical market, the newspaper said.

"I'm going to deal with the pharmaceutical realities of the next 10 years, and they're very different from those of the 1990s," Witty told the Journal in an interview.

A few weeks ago, Glaxo's chief of research and development invited a group of healthcare officials from the UK, France, Italy and Spain to London to examine the drugs the company was developing.

"(It) was an opportunity for us to say, 'Look, here's what the development pipeline at (Glaxo) looks like, here's what these drugs are going to be...which one of these do you think?' This is exactly where I would prioritize healthcare dollars," Witty was quoted as saying.

The officials who were mostly looking at the drugs Glaxo was testing in small, intermediate human trials, gave blunt feedback on which drugs to prioritize and what sort of data Glaxo would need to show to make state healthcare systems willing to buy the drugs, Witty told the paper.

Glaxo could not be immediately reached for comment.

(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore, Editing by Jacqueline Wong)