| The pharmaceutical industry has entered a period of evolution and the next five
to 10 years are certainly set to be interesting. Undoubtedly these are challenging
times for the traditional model of large pharmaceutical companies, where each
have a handful of major blockbuster products which, in turn, help to propagate the
next round of R&D, whilst also returning a healthy profit on investment. With the
recent decline in pipeline products passing through Phase III trials, it is an ageing
product portfolio which is sustaining R&D.
These older products are soon to be
open to legitimate generic competition and concurrently there has been a large
increase in the number of specialised and generic companies bringing products
rapidly to market, increasing the level of competition in the sector. Counterbalanced
against both branded and generic medicines has been the explosion in counterfeits
flooding the market, aided by the global expansion of the internet and direct
consumer marketing. |
