Outlook 2020

Supplement industry’s bullseye on “60 Minutes” after its June segment critical of probiotic health benefits generated the most reads for a US consumer health and overall for HBW Insight articles in 2020. Articles about COVID-19 enforcement actions weren’t as widely read as coverage of FDA’s reorganization in its OTC drug offices and its approvals of additional ingredients to be available OTC.

Given the consecutive growth Krka has seen in its prescription pharmaceuticals portfolio along with an increase in overall sales, the company has announced investments of €134m in infrastructure and production facilities. This follows a €30m investment in the first half of 2020.

In Vivo held its first executive briefing in December 2019 focused on the outlook for the biopharma sector in the 2020s. Looking to the next decade, six panelists debated in front of an audience of invited guests a variety of issues expected to dominate agendas: pricing and reimbursement, digital transformation, mergers and acquisitions, funding and more.

2019 will be remembered as a banner year for international drug makers as many grew at phenomenal rates in China, despite expansion of the “4+7” centralized procurement scheme and steep price cuts in exchange for reimbursement. As the government continues to emphasize affordability for cancer drugs and major anti-infectives, competition is heating up quickly and immune-oncology alone has seen six PD-1s elbowing each other for market share.

PAGB president and Perrigo UK head Neil Lister reflects on 100 years of the association's UK OTC market leadership, as well as its plans for the future. 

Scrip delves into some key trends that could play out in 2020 to shape and impact Indian pharmaceutical firms. Keep an eye on opportunities in key markets like China and the US, and on private equity interest in “control deals” and trade margin-related tweaks on the Indian market.

INFOGRAPHIC: An interactive timeline of HBW Insight's coverage of the blossoming European CBD market in 2019. The timeline covers the main events of the year beginning with the European Commission's decision to classify CBD as a novel food, and ending on the filing of the first application for a synthetic form of the cannabis-derived ingredient.

Bayer’s ambitious campaign to reposition itself as a global leader in two complementary fields – health and nutrition – will face its toughest test in the US, with its highly litigious approach to product liability and a tendency to target pharmaceuticals as the source of the health system’s affordability and access problems.

The term artificial intelligence was coined at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project in 1956, but it is only in very recent years that it has been consistently at the top of the agenda in discussions on the future direction of health care. AI is now increasingly seen as a realistic solution to demand overload on clinicians. At the same time, techno-fears are abating. This confluence will transform health care radically in the next two decades.  

Moderate growth at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Amgen moved the two companies into the top 10 pharma ranks, based on the most recent Scrip 100 rankings, while declining growth at Gilead and Teva moved those drug makers out.

Moderate growth at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Amgen moved the two companies into the top 10 pharma ranks, based on the most recent Scrip 100 rankings, while declining growth at Gilead and Teva moved those drug makers out.

In 2018, the top 100 publicly listed and reportable medical device technology companies had global sales spanning from over $30bn to some $100m in the lower reaches. As the latest In Vivo Medtech 100 ranking shows, many of the major changes in value sales were linked to company restructurings. But there were some impressive organic gains too.

Drug pricing and access issues expose the pharmaceutical sector especially acutely to calls for companies to meet ethical and social goals, alongside commercial ones. Digital is up-ending pharma’s processes, its workplaces and its consumers. R&D productivity is spluttering. Amid this turmoil, CEOs highlight company culture – the way an organization behaves – as a crucial ingredient for success. But what is a “right” culture? Organizational culture is neither static nor singular. It is continuously influenced by acquisitions, markets, new technologies and new generations. And pharma’s history suggests that culture change cannot happen without sufficient people change.

Charting the executive gender mix across 384 companies from mid-2014 to mid-2019 demonstrates that C-suite gender balance in pharma is moving towards a point that more closely reflects its total workforce, but that progress has been slow and that there is a long road to travel before the transformation is complete. 

Meindert Boysen, head of NICE’s Centre For Health Technology Evaluation, shares advice for companies aiming to get their medicine to patients. His golden rules: engage in early advice and be more realistic about pricing.

For providers and medtech manufacturers alike, the decade ahead will be a time of coming to terms with digital technologies and integrating new methods of payment. Quality of service delivery remains the market entry criterion, but companies will have to adapt to evolving health care delivery models. The stakes are implausibly high. Will they be able to capitalize on the changes in a market that is more competitive and unpredictable than ever?

Crystal ball gazing is a tricky, sometimes futile, endeavor. No one knows what the future holds, but there are consistent scenarios emerging that are being debated by industry leaders as they try to foretell and outsmart key market catalysts expected to ripple across the biopharma sector in 2020. With insights from executives, investors and consultancies, as well as our own experts, In Vivo can paint a picture of biopharma wins and woes expected in the new year and new decade.

In 2019, Mylan moved up to become the world’s leading generics, biosimilars and OTC player, according to Informa Pharma Intelligence’s latest global rankings. Sandoz has surpassed troubled Teva into second place but is set to surrender that position following the sale of its US solid-dose and dermatology business to India’s Aurobindo.

Given the transformative nature of regenerative medicines, treatments yielding greatly improved patient responses that now exist as viable products on the market, cell and gene drug developers over the past several years have been drawing deal attention. Not only through collaborative partnerships, but also as acquisition targets.

The potential of China’s vast health care products market is alluring. It has proved off-limits to most of the global medtech industry, and is rarely in the early launch strategies of global companies. Government-led initiatives want that to change, as evidenced in the latest Five-Year Plan and the recent Healthy China 2030 report.