Sustainable Global Health Systems and Pharmaceutical Development

Despite being an economically intense activity, the current state of drug product development makes a limited effort to integrate economics into product design and development. For example, pharmaceutical scientists are excellent at a data-driven decision-making process that requires technical elements and a few strategic elements. However, there is minimal integration of financial valuation elements (commonly employed in other high tech industries such as fine chemicals, automotive, aerospace, etc.) into pharmaceutical drug development. Unfortunately, this hurts the sustainability of the health system of which these products will be a part in the future. A desirable future state is the one that integrates fundamentals of economics in product design and development so that the decision-making is parameterized, the cost of goods could be lowered, wastage can be reduced, patient-centricity is built into the design, and manufacturing/distribution efficiencies can be gained. The financial benefits of such an approach could allow for these savings to be passed on to the stakeholders and improve the value proposition of pharmaceuticals, which is critical to maintaining the innovation potential. This book hopes to introduce the reader to this desired future state of pharmaceutical drug development.