France spent more of its gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare in 2010 than the average of other key developed markets.
Traditionally considered an immature generics market, France has seen the introduction of measures aimed at increasing generics use in order to cut healthcare costs.
Competition from drugs in the same class (with the same mechanism of action and treating the same disease) presents a clear challenge to a first-in-class market entrant. And the speed with which these competitors arrive impacts market dynamics, commercial strategies, and, increasingly, drug prices. Therapies that enjoy extended monopolies as sole entrants in a particular class have greater commercial flexibility in negotiating with payers. Multiple drugs in the same class give payers better leverage with which to negotiate rebates and discounts with drug companies.
With the entry of the first monoclonal antibody biosimilar in most European markets and approval of the first biosimilar in the US, 2015 promises to be a landmark year for the biosimilars market. The savings potential of biosimilars in a time of constrained healthcare budgets is an attractive value proposition for many payers, and regulators’ positive stance in terms of making the approval and development process as efficient as possible is advantageous for the sector.
Faced with pressure from stakeholders – particularly patients – governments, regulators, and some countries have introduced new options and/or processes to speed up access to medicines. This includes access before marketing authorization, and speeding up the marketing authorization, or less often, the health technology assessment processes.
Drug prices in the US have been the subject of intense debate over the past 2–3 years, following a surge in spending on prescription medicines and steep price increases in some categories
Digital’s potential to transform every aspect of the pharmaceutical value chain, from discovery to commercial, is widely documented.
Payers view spending on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) drugs as significant, as there is a large patient base requiring expensive biologic therapies. The market has been long dominated by the TNF-alpha inhibitors Humira and Remicade, but more recent biologic launches such as Entyvio and Stelara have focused on novel mechanisms of action.
By any standards, last year was a turbulent one for the pharmaceutical sector. The patent cliff claimed some of the industry’s most profitable properties and with the market share of these drugs losing ground to generics, put even more pressure on the top- and bottom-line performance of key players such as Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca, to name just two of the worst hit.
Such pressure – and the drive to cut fixed costs that goes with it – has been a boon for clinical CROs, which have become increasingly indispensable to the business of drug discovery, as clinical development is outsourced and specialist units, such as clinical laboratories, are offloaded to CROs in long-term guaranteed strategic partnerships.
Long-acting beta 2 agonist/long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LABA/LAMA) combination inhalers have been gaining traction due to an expanding evidence base for their wider use, and competitive pricing.
Payers were originally extremely worried about the potential cost burden of Entresto, however, the level of concern surrounding the drug is currently moderate as physician uptake has been lower than expected.
China has recently completed its 2009–11 healthcare reform. The reform has come at a high cost: although the Ministry of Health intended to invest CNY850bn ($135bn) in the plan, total investment has now exceeded CNY1,100bn ($175bn).
It is no secret that Americans spend heavily on healthcare – in 2013, US healthcare expenditure totaled nearly $3bn ($9,255 per person) and accounted for 17.4% of gross domestic product.
Payers are not overly worried about the cost of bladder cancer, due to the relatively small patient population in comparison to other solid tumors.
The route to a formal US regulatory pathway for biosimilar approval was established with the creation of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2010. However, it took five more years for the first biosimilar to be launched in the US through this pathway, namely Zarxio.
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