According to the survey, pharma companies are largely shifting away from selling medicines and are focusing on promoting health outcomes through initiatives like raising patients’ long-term use of medicines as prescribed, to link payment for medical services to performance and conducting wellness programs.
While Pfizer has formed a health solutions division to work with health systems for prevention, companies like Roche are focusing on diagnostics to identify groups of patients who will benefit from treatments.
The survey also highlighted the increasing importance of emerging markets, especially the fast-growing Bric economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China in the pharmaceutical sector. It also identified – market access and reimbursement, cost-containment and R&D productivity – as the major problems undermining the industry.
Most of the 30 drug companies which participated in the survey voted for cost-cutting as an important savings measure and mergers and alliances for exploring their growth potential.