We are entering a new era of medical innovation. Between new:
- Ways to monitor, collect and transfer medical information through mobile devices;
- Drugs that deal with some of the most destructive and debilitating diseases known to man, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, mental illness and diabetes; and
- Minimally invasive surgeries, some even performed by robots;
Scientists are fundamentally reforming the practice of medicine.
But while some of these advances, like explosion of mHealth (i.e., using mobile devices like cell phones and tablets) are new to the medical field, the pharmaceutical industry is as old as medicine itself.
A decade ago, an awful lot of policymakers had written off the drug industry as too big, too costly, and too unwilling or unable to come up with new products that patients want and need.
But a new study from the Analysis Group examining the biopharmaceutical pipeline demonstrates that the reports of the drug industry’s demise were greatly exaggerated.
Take vaccines, for example. They are one of the oldest biotech drugs, going back more than 200 years. A decade ago everyone seemed to think that vaccines were boring, mundane, yesterday’s technology. And yet vaccine research has come back with a vengeance, as researchers look for formulas that will keep us from getting such diseases as cancer or arthritis or Alzheimer’s.
The Analysis report says there are 5,400 medicines currently in development, with 833 in Phase III clinical trials (the last one before seeking Food and Drug Administration approval).
Critics used to claim that the drug companies were focused on “follow-on” drugs rather than doing the hard, and expensive, work of developing new cures. And yet the Analysis report says that 70 percent of the drugs in the pipeline are first-in-class medicines.
Moreover, the number of “orphan drugs” in development is way up. Those are drugs for rare diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people worldwide. For most of the 1990s, scientists were working on an average of 80 orphan drugs a year. In 2011 about 200 were in the pipeline.
While the mHealth movement is new and its benefits just now being discovered; the pharmaceutical industry is old and its benefits are being rediscovered. Innovation, not complex and unworkable legislation, is our best hope for improving the health care system.