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Pharmaceutical, Biotech And Medical
Device Companies Need To Adopt Dramatic Changes
( Abstracted from a survey conducted by Deloitte )
A recent survey of top executives at pharmaceutical,
biotech and medical device firms conducted by Deloitte reveals these companies
will likely need to adopt dramatic changes in their business strategies between
now and 2015 if they want to maintain their success.
The following is a list of changes ahead and what
they mean for companies as per the interview given by United Press International
interviewed Jacques Mulder, one of the main authors of the report and a
principal within Deloitte's life sciences and health care practice :
Major Trends
Companies expect that more than 50 percent of their
revenues by 2015 will come from products and services they don't offer today.
There are companies that are starting to diversify
into partial ownership of treatment facilities. So in the future, not all
revenues may come from sales of purely drugs or devices or biologics, but there
may be other offerings, such as disease management or other services that go
just beyond the supply of products.
What companies might be engaged in these trends?
Five years ago, we had a distinction between biotech
and pharmaceuticals, there's almost no major pharma company today that doesn't
have a biologics portfolio. So there really is very little differentiation
between biotech and pharma companies.
Medical device companies are seen starting to put
drugs on devices, anti-infective coatings, anti-clotting agents like with the
drug-eluting stents.
Significant advances are also seen in the
convergence between diagnostics and therapeutics. Companies are applying
diagnostic tests, genotyping, phenotyping even, or using biomarkers to select
patient populations that would be more responsive to certain therapies.
Convergence between biotech and pharma
Convergence between biotech and pharma is
anticipated to be happening more and more.
Major companies and smaller ones are likely to be
getting much, much closer together and leveraging technology and leveraging each
other's science to bring products and new applications to market.
About medical device companies applying drugs to
their products
The trend of medical device companies applying drugs
to their products will lead to them acquiring pharmaceutical companies or
vice-versa.
Because there is such pressure on the research and
development pipeline which is resulting in two trends :
One is for device companies that want to put product
onto their devices or to enhance their performance.
They really don't have to deal with the scientific
risk of the chemistry because that's been proven in the human body. So it almost
becomes a new model of development.
Also to find different applications for a product
that's been around for a while.
About the impact of these changing trends and models
to companies
A very high level of alliance formation.
More co-development and research alliances between
small and larger companies is expected . Small and large companies are going to
be moving much closer together and collaborating much more to get science out
into the market -- and ultimately to the patient -- than in the past.
Not necessarily going to be acquisitions the way
seen for the past 10 years, but much more of that collaborative alliance.
By 2015, how will the landscape look?
The first is the markets the major companies are
focusing on, being North America, some of the major European countries and now,
of course, with China and India and some of those markets really evolving and
Africa, the foot print of activity globally is going to shift.
Companies that will be successful by 2015 will be
the ones that have been able to use and successfully leverage developing
economies. Not just to get access to people because the war for talent is
significant at this point in time. Where do we find the right scientists to be
able to fuel and sustain our need for new research and new discoveries? Those
markets will become global very, very quickly. There are significant benefits
and we see pretty much all of the major companies making a play for utilizing
science and also access to patients in some of the developing economies because
there's real competition for finding trial subjects. In diabetes for instance,
finding patients you can actually do clinical work on is becoming a competitive
advantage. Expansion to new patient populations is important. And of course,
companies that have the ability to adjust their business models in such a way
that they can actually do profitable business in these developing environments
will be ones that will be successful by 2015.
Ref :
http://www.upi.com/HealthBusiness/
view.php?StoryID=20061221-125658-7772r
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