  Today, bodies such as provincial drug boards, which decide which medications will be reimbursed by the provinces, the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board, which regulates the prices research-based pharmaceutical firms can charge for medications, and the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health, which provides formulary listing recommendations to most publicly funded drug plans in Canada, all exert a force on the pharmaceutical industry through the pricing of medications and determining the accessibility of medications to the public at large. “I deal with these issues on a daily basis,” says Dotto, who holds the position of Director, Government and External Affairs for Montreal-based Abbott Laboratories Canada. “These organizations play a significant role in our industry today.” Dotto contrasts the present-day reality to the time in 1981 when he began in the pharmaceutical business. “There were sales positions and there were marketing positions, not the myriad number of new customer postions that exist today,” notes Dotto, whose first job in the industry was as a sales representative in Ottawa for Montreal-based Nordic Pharmaceuticals Ltd. An early achievement he recalls as a sales representative for Nordic was the launch of Cardizem, a calcium-channel blocker which became the first $100 million product in Canada. He received a promotion to regional sales manager for Western Canada and later moved to Nordic’s head office where he headed the firm’s CHE department and, as a product manager, he re-launched Glucophage, an oral hypoglycemic, and tripled the sales of the product in two years. With the movement toward mergers in the industry, a trend that saw Nordic absorbed by a larger corporate entity, Dotto chose to travel west on Highway 401 and assumed the job of group product manager at Syntex Inc. in Toronto, and later took a position as marketing manager for Eli Lilly Canada Inc. A longing for Montreal prompted Dotto to travel back to that city to take a position with Abbott. “I really missed Montreal,” says Dotto, an avid kayaker who negotiates the challenging waves of the Lachine Rapids in Montreal in the warmer months of the year. Dotto notes that he spent time in immersion programs in Jonquière, Que. to improve his French and is now very comfortable in his second language. Since returning to Montreal in 1995 and joining Abbott, he has held several positions, including Director of Sales and Marketing, Business Unit Director for Abbott’s gastrointestinal and urology division, and Director of Business Development. A focal point of his career since joining Abbott was handling the company’s acquisition of Knoll Pharmaceuticals. Inspired by his daughter’s volunteer work in central Africa, which she began as a teenager, Dotto has dedicated many vacation days over the last five years to performing humanitarian work in Malawi, Africa. Through their family charity, Dotto and his daughter Stephanie have contributed to the building of schools, have taken medicines to Malawi, and have worked on other health and educational projects for the population. In addition, Dotto has been instrumental in coordinating millions of dollars worth of product donations from his employer Abbott through Health Partners International of Canada. |