The Need to Introspect

Global health inequity is a significant crisis facing humankind and is a gaping hole in our efforts to achieve a just and equal global society. Significant efforts have been taken by numerous political leaders, visionaries, and international organizations over many generations to outline the various actions, approaches, and recommendations that aspire to close the health inequity gap. Unfortunately, despite of well-intentioned efforts from stakeholders, access to medicines remains a vexing issue. Potential solutions include responsible governance, positive cultural shifts, balanced socioeconomics, infrastructure growth, and increased public awareness. Another approach could be to improve the efficiency of the pharmaceutical development process. From a for-profit company’s perspective, substantial financial risk must be undertaken without any assurance of economic reward as pharmaceutical research is complicated, time-consuming, attritive, and costly, with estimated pre-approval costs of $2.6 billion per new drug. Drugs that are successful in the marketplace are typically the only sources of revenue for a pharmaceutical company, whether big or small. However, there is an opportunity to reduce the development cost for new drug products. To stem the decline in productivity and to optimize its resources, a desirable future state for the pharmaceutical industry integrates economics into product design and development. Such an approach will allow for the decision-making to be parameterized, cost of goods to be lowered, wastage reduced, patient-centricity built into the design, and manufacturing/distribution efficiencies to be gained. The financial benefits of such an approach could allow these savings to be passed on to the stakeholders, improve the value proposition of pharmaceuticals, help bridge the health inequity gap, and enhance the sustainability of our global healthcare systems. Such a utopian future requires understanding where do we stand with our healthcare systems today.