PwC: Pharma industry on cusp of golden era

By Rob Starr, Content Manager, Big4.com

Major scientific and technological advances, alongside socio-demographic changes and increasing demand for medicines, will revive pharma’s fortunes post 2020, according to a new report from PwC, Pharma 2020: From vision to decision. However, in order to survive to 2020 and then to potentially thrive on the opportunities the next decade holds, important decisions need to be made – and the challenges of rising customers expectations, poor scientific productivity and cultural barriers need to be addressed.

Steve Arlington, global advisory pharmaceutical and life sciences leader, PwC, said:

“A healthy, vibrant and responsive pharma industry is vital to society for the development of new medicines. More needs to be done to support and encourage long-term investment in the discovery and development of medicines to treat serious disease. We need to all work together to improve the wellbeing of populations.”

The report believes that the industry needs to rebalance its expenditure and invest more in the early part of the R&D process to deal with rising costs. More needs to be done to improve productivity and the returns on R&D investment. Most of the products that will be launched in the coming years are already in the pipeline, but they are not aligned with demand and rising expectations from healthcare payers, providers and patients. Marrying the pipeline with the market in the next decade is going to be the key.