Fixing Pharma.   For years, perhaps for decades, the doom and gloom about pharma’s decline has always lurked just around the corner…price controls, me-too products, and unsustainable healthcare costs always threatened.   For those of us who have been in the trenches seeking the holy grail… a robust pipeline, that is… there has always been another change initiative to keep us busy.  The skeptics amongst us have a name for it…Flavor of the Month.

But this time things seems a bit different, more intense, with daily news portending fundamental change.  Why now?  It is more than the global economic slowdown, which will surely change most industries.  Pharma as an industry has the financial strength and conservative management to survive, honed by decades of intense regulation and oversight by the watchdogs of many governments, as well as patient advocates.   The constant criticism of pharma’s pricing and marketing and sales practices has actually made the industry far stronger than some other industries that escaped scathing criticism from the public until the bottom suddenly fell out this year.

Yet with all its fundamental strengths, pharma definitely needs to be “fixed.”  The risks of drug discovery and development have never been higher and the costs continue to climb.  The complexity of conquering the diseases that cause so much mortality and morbidity around the globe has only grown with time.

It is a combination of issues, as well as scientific and technological advances, that are finally piling up high enough to tip the balance in favor of change.   Amongst these are: the sequencing of the human genome; the even more daunting challenge of understanding disease that this will facilitate; demand for healthcare for the world’s most impoverished patients in the developing world; demand for healthcare as a right, rather than a privilege, in the developed world and technology which can fundamentally change how we collaborate and innovate.

The need for transformation of the pharma business model and process is paramount.   And the beneficiaries of such change will not just be the life sciences industry, but patients around the world.

So, as a long time member of the change-is-good optimists’ club, we’ve decided to weigh in on the debate and welcome others to do the same.  This blog will focus on the ways that pharma can adapt its business model to thrive in a world that needs its products and its innovation but really doesn’t want to pay for them!

Join the debate here where we will seek commentary on all points of view.   Please leave your comments below.  Oh, yes, just one Fixing Pharma Blog Rule.  Comments will be moderated and inappropriate language or unprofessional attacks on anyone will not be tolerated.

If you would like to provide input for a guest post, please notify us by email, especially if you have a proposal to Fix Pharma, since the focus of this blog is on finding solutions…because the world needs lots more of what Pharma does best!

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