Teknikbron

Pharmaceuticals means medicinal drugs based on a chemical active which include prescription drugs like hormones, antibiotics, antidepressants; over the counter medicines like cold or flu remedies, pain relievers, antiseptics and veterinary medicines.

Innovation is becoming expensive

The development of pharmaceuticals or drugs is quite expensive. Most boards or medical institutions approve only a small percentage of drugs for their use in humans. Only about 25 drugs are approved each year for marketing. The approvals for these new drugs come only after investing heavily on chemical trials and pre-clinical development. Those drugs which fail through these processes face large costs while getting no revenues in return. In recent years global spending on pharmaceuticals has topped to $643 billion, though their growth has somewhat slowed in North America and Europe.

A high share of investments go to sales cost

Pharmaceutical companies usually spend a large amount of money for marketing, advertising and lobbying. Advertising is mostly done through mainstream media and healthcare journals. Also in some countries pharmaceutical companies are allowed to directly advertise in the general public. Most pharmaceutical companies employ people for sales called ‘drug reps’ for marketing their products personally and directly to healthcare providers and physicians.

Since the physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants write prescriptions for the patients determining which drugs are to be used; they play the most important part in pharmaceutical sales. The largest of the pharmaceutical companies can have thousands of representatives and these companies spend around $5 billion every year sending the representatives to the offices of the physicians. The services of companies specializing in healthcare marketing research are taken by the pharmaceutical companies to perform research on marketing among the healthcare professionals and physicians. Pharmacies and commercial stores are also a target for marketing and non prescription sales for the pharmaceuticals companies.

In the developing countries, the roles of many pharmaceutical companies are still being debated. These include the topics of aid being provided to these countries and the use of the poorest people for chemical trials without adequate protections. They also include criticisms for their reluctance for investing in treatments in poorer countries.

Less innovations + higher cost may force companiues to dramatic changes

In the recent years pharmaceuticals companies have come to difficult terms with their share holders, regulators and markets trying to give significant pressure to the industries for a change within. Due to the skyrocketing costs of operation, thinning pipelines, greater regulatory burdens and calls for lowering prices of the pharmaceuticals, the pharmaceuticals industries are facing many challenges which may radically transform their business.

Biotechnology contains hope for growth

In this situation biotechnology contains a lot of hope for the industry, and indeed in all the forms form conventional biotechnology to genetic engineering.

Screening natures biological compounds is still one of the most interesting ressources for new drugs, based on the experiences with penicilline found by Fleming decades ago. Nature contains millions of possible drugs, which are screened and evaluated now by a couple of companies.

On the other hand the improving knowledge of biological processes do open the hope to develop chemical targeted at the biological processes.

And at the very end the is the idea of manipulation genetic material, which stillopens the door for many ethical questions.

In any way we will see a flow of interesting inventions from this trend in the next decade, although the risks and increased requirements for testing new compounds will also increase the costs dramatically.