Pharmaceutical Market Expected to Get a Little Smaller

By: John Jordan, CIS Compliance Associate
johnjordan@cis-partners.com

With the market rebounding in many areas what is in store for the pharmaceutical industry?

Researchers from Business Monitoring International are predicting a contraction within the pharmaceutical market. The drop will supposedly be around -0.35 percent within the time frame of 2008 – 2013 (1). According to the report, “The contraction is small as we believe that the healthcare reform will allow wider access to medical services due to mandatory insurance cover.”(1)A reason behind this drop would be what researchers are calling the “patent cliff”, in the year 2011. A patent cliff is when a pharmaceutical patent is set to expire (1).

This year alone, over 100 products are set to expire; luckily most are not substantial. All of the products dropping from patent protection will open up the brand drugs to the generic drug market (2). Another problem seems to be that manufacturers are launching fewer products, and are therefore not making up for the patents are expiring.

Another reason behind the drop in the pharmaceutical market is due to in large part the additional growth of cheaper generic drugs. This will cause the generic drug market should expect a growth in sales, as well as, the new healthcare reform.

The contraction of the market is expected to yield a value of $302 billion (1).

Sources:
1. http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-patent-cliff/2009-01-22
2. http://www.marketresearch.com/product/display.asp?productid=2404162
3. http://www.marketresearch.com/product/display.asp?productid=2404162