What Are the Top Pharma Challenges Right Now?

In an interconnected world, epidemics of viral diseases are inevitable but unpredictable. When 2020 began, no one would have put a new coronavirus among the top pharma challenges of the year. But obviously the pandemic has become the most important healthcare story of the year. As we went to press, there were an estimated over 200,00 cases in the United States and about 900,000 worldwide. Gilead and other companies are scrambling to test antiviral medications in hopes of identifying effective treatments. Meanwhile, some of pharma’s biggest companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, and several smaller ones, such as Moderna Therapeutics and CureVac, are in the race to develop a vaccine. 

COVID-19 looks like it will eclipse most everything else in healthcare this year, although the issues of drug prices and affordability aren’t going away; they are just in the background for the time being. 

Specialty drugs, in particular, are a big portion of the price and affordability problem - and a much bigger bite than the average consumer can chew. They accounted for just 2.2% of prescription volume in 2018, but the number of specialty prescriptions grew twice as fast as the number of traditional medications, according to the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science’s latest annual drug expenditure report.