PharmaTimes - January 2016

News

Global M&A hits all-time high
9Post-antibiotic’ era draws nearer
Divisive plans for new-look CDF
UK paying less for cancer drugs than EU
NICE under attack
GPs ‘failing as a profession’
Huge demand for diabetes programme

SmartViews

Is merger mania on the wane?
2015 was a record-breaking year for mergers and acquisitions but what does 2016 hold?

University challenge
Who will win in the battle between Oxford and Cambridge to become the UK’s top biotech cluster?

Failure to launch
A new report delves into why so many pharma brands struggle to launch and what can be done about it

Compliance complacency?
How companies can transform their compliance function from a burden to a benefit

Matching mutation to medicine
Will linking diagnostic tests for cancer to treatment deliver the promise of personalised medicine

Blood pressure
The race to the top of the anticoagulant market

Feature

Review of 2015
A look back at the biggest stories in pharma and healthcare from 2015, with opinions and analysis from industry experts

SmartPeople

Best behaviour
Jane Asscher from 23red explains what makes a successful public health campaign

Interview
Aspiring marketer Matt Callaghan discusses the challenges of working in three different countries, his foray into strategic marketing and excitement at winning a prestigious award

Appointments
This month’s job moves and new appointments

Patient Files
How stroke patient Fleur Costello’s life was saved by a garbled Facebook message

Outcomes: a gamechanger for pharma

Patient-recorded outcome measures are likely to become a key part of how healthcare is provided, funded and managed. But is industry ready?

Healthcare Writer Lynne Taylor

The British government’s determination to place health outcomes at the heart of NHS decision-making presents UK-based drugmakers with a unique and potentially huge advantage over their global competitors.

Working in collaboration with the NHS to identify a product’s true value – in other words its value to the patient – has the potential to boost levels of medicines uptake and could also lead to products arriving earlier to market, both in the UK and overseas, a PharmaTimes business meeting was told recently. Leading these potentially game-changing opportunities is the NHS patient-recorded outcome measures programme, which began in 2009.

Innovative drugmakers have included PROMs in their clinical trials for many years, and the data have also long been used in observational studies and population health surveys. “We have decades of experience using these instruments and pharma is way ahead of the game. The fact they are now being measured in healthcare systems changes everything,” Professor Nancy Devlin, research director at the Office of Health Economics told the meeting. Indeed, PROMs are likely to become a key part of how all healthcare is provided, funded and managed, The King’s Fund healthcare policy think-tank has forecast.

So what exactly are PROMs and why should this matter to pharma? You can find out by reading the full article online here

January 2016 - magazine highlights

Help… fainter cannoi get up

Screenwriter, university lecturer and mum of three, Fleur...

University challenge

The old rivalry between Cambridge and Oxford University is...

Failure to launch

A new report delves into why so many pharma brands struggl...

Compliance complacency?

Companies can transform their compliance function from a b...

Matching mutation to medicine

Will linking diagnostic tests for lung cancer to treatment...

Blood pressure

With a crowded market and a  long-established generic to o...

2015: How was it for you?

2016 has arrived, but was 2015 a good year for you, your c...

Trust fund?

The Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) began to crack under increasin...

Focus on the patient not on profit?

Back in our May issue, we focused on one of the hottest to...

The biosimilar era begins

2015 was the year biosimilars finally delivered on the hyp...

Global threat

The world is drawing closer to a ‘post-antibiotic era’, an...

Mobile home

Embracing the promise of mHealth

The price is right

Drug pricing was put under more scrutiny than ever last ye...

Second time lucky

The original patent for pregabalin (Lyrica) as a treatment...

Merger mania

In November of this year, the IRS outlined more new anti-i...

Accelerated access?

2015 saw the arrival of some truly innovative new medicine...

Best behaviour

To improve public health you need to be an active particip...

Making a difference

Aspiring marketer Matt Callaghan discusses the challenges...

Is merger mania on the wane?

Acquisitions in the pharma sector in 2015 are even higher...