An Overview of the Pharma Industry in 2016

According to a report from Meta Science News, Pharma R&D spending has continuously increased since 1980 and is expected to continue growing in the upcoming years. We saw a number of driving trends within the past year in the pharmaceutical industry, including 3D printing technologies, biosimilar drug launches, corporate consolidations and many others. The pharmaceutical industry is evolving from these trends and we can certainly expect this to carry on into 2017.

Medicine Gets Personal

We are all different, and the pharma industry is beginning to acknowledge this by developing personalized medications as opposed to the usual “one size fits most” that’s tailored to the average. While this technology is in the early development stages, it is moving us closer to more foreseeable and accurate healthcare for individuals. PWC estimates that about 94% of pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers are involved in research related to personalized medications.

Big Data & Artificial Intelligence

We all know that big data and artificial intelligence (AI) is currently influencing a number of markets; what some of us don’t know is that even the pharmaceutical industry is involved here. With R&D spending increasing, it is essential for researchers to focus on solving the real problem – the high rate of failure in new novel drugs and medications. Researchers and scientists hope to diminish this issue through the help of artificial intelligence. Scientists from a bioinformatics firm have recently discovered how to teach AI to forecast the beneficial uses of new drugs before they even enter the testing phase. The AI was experimented with over 600 different drugs and over time, proved to develop a strong ability to predict the usefulness of a drug; the testing revealed over 50% accuracy, with AI identifying one out of 12 therapeutic applications.

Better Make It Wearable

Wearable devices and technologies have experienced great growth in the past few years. By 2018, the global wearable device market is forecast to grow to about $6 billion USD. 2016 certainly helped to drive wearables to the mainstream market with the recent launches of the next generation of Fitbit wearables, as well as the Apple Watch 2. Wearable health devices and trackers not only increase efficiency in patient-to-physician communication, but also enable pharmaceutical research regarding precision medicine techniques, thus improving patient health.

Merge and Acquire

Though 2016 did not beat the record of activity in 2015, mergers and acquisitions still took hold of the pharmaceutical market. The “year of merger mania”, as keyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, began early in January 2016 as Shire set the bar high and purchased Baxalta for $32 billion. However, possibly the most notable in 2016 involves the deal between Monsanto and Bayer. In May 2016, Monsanto originally declined the $62 billion offer from Bayer, but in September they signed a definitive merger agreement with one another; Bayer offering $128 per share – the largest all-cash transaction bid on record.

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Sources
http://fortune.com/2016/01/11/shire-baxalta-merger-deal/
http://news.meta.com/2016/08/22/top-5-pharmaceutical-trends-2016/
https://www.inverse.com/article/16125-how-artificial-intelligence-is-being-used-to-discover-new-uses-for-drugs
https://www.jax.org/genetics-and-healthcare/personalized-medicine/what-is-personalized-medicine
http://www.pharmafile.com/news/502337/what-could-artificial-intelligence-mean-pharma
http://www.pwc.com/us/en/health-industries/top-health-industry-issues/assets/2016-us-hri-top-issues.pdf
https://www.statista.com/statistics/302482/wearable-device-market-value/

Categorias: Pharma/Biotech , R&D

Tags: pharma pharma industry pharmaceutical trends wearable devices,