Boehringer Ingelheim, 35: Making a difference in the lives of Pinoys

Boehringer Ingelheim Phils. Inc. (BIPHI), one of the country’s leading pharmaceutical companies, celebrated last Friday its 35th anniversary of making a difference in the lives of Filipinos.

Its mother company, Boehringer Ingelheim, began operating some 116 years ago.

BIPHI is one of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the country. Its unwavering commitment is to develop truly innovative drugs for the treatment of various diseases like hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and osteoarthritis.

Boehringer Ingelheim is a multinational corporation based in Ingelheim, Germany. It all stared in the summer of 1885 when Albert Boehringer, the company’s founder, acquired a small tartaric acid factory in the lower Ingelheim am Rhein region of Germany.

Since then, it has evolved into a truly international player in the pharmaceutical industry with operations in more than 60 countries. It mainly manufactures and provides pharmaceutical products – prescription medicines and consumer health care products – but it is also involved in animal health.

Early success

In the Philippines, it started as just a division of Muller and Phipps, a distributor of pharmaceutical products. BI Phils.’ early success can be attributed to Heinrich Merkt, its first general manager who introduced and strictly enforced a "no monkey business" policy in the company and emphasized among the employees core values such as honesty, integrity and compliance with the requirements of the law.

Through the years, BI continuously introduced breakthrough products that have saved lives and improved the quality of lives of people.

Examples of these are the recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (Actilyse) used for myocardial infarction, telmisartan (Micardis) for hypertension, meloxicam (Mobic) for osteoarthritis and ipratropium bromide (Atrovent) for COPD.

Boehringer Ingelheim has set research and development as its priority with the goal of submitting one innovative drug every year for registration in the drug development process, using modern technologies such as genomics, bioinformatics, combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening. More than 6,000 people are working in BI’s various medical research and development centers.

Corporate partner

As a corporate partner of the medical community, BI, through its foundation, has supported the specialist training of physicians from the provinces.

This program has helped spread specialist care in different areas outside Metro Manila. The foundation has also provided funds for health researches in major health institutions in the country.

"I believe that the company’s most important contribution in the past 35 years, aside from the medical innovations, is its excellent relationship with its people who are more than willing to stay in the company," says BIPHI president Stefan Killian. — PLG News and Views