Launching a new drug can cost well over $500 million. Is there a way to cut those costs using digital as the only channel? The short answer is; it depends on your audience and market.
Category Archive: in the news
- According to the Lancet, “from 1995 to 2014, there were 14,672,409 incident cases for 30 types of cancer. Incidence significantly increased for six of 12 obesity-related cancers in young adults (25–49 years), with steeper rises in younger generations.
- The risk of cancer is increasing for half of the obesity-related cancers in young adults, with the increase steeper at progressively younger ages.
The obesity market is expected to grow into a $54B market, but many questions remain, including the cost of $1,000-$1,500 a month and side effects, including nausea or diarrhea. After years of failed drugs, a new class of weight loss drugs reached the market last year — proving to be highly effective, but we don’t know about long-term side effects.
Apple’s Health app gets new capabilities with iOS 16. The Health app adds Medications, allowing users to conveniently build and manage a medications list, create schedules and reminders, and track their medications, vitamins, or supplements. Will it matter?
According to STAT News, “Americans born in 2021 can expect to live for just 76.1 years — the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996, according to a new government analysis published Wednesday. This is the biggest two-year decline — 2.7 years in total — in almost 100 years.” It’s only going to get worse too.
PhRMA is lying to protect its profits, and the lies have reached a new height as the Senate moved to adopt modest drug pricing negotiation measures in the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill “could propel us light-years back into the dark ages of biomedical research,” Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, president of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, said last month. This is, of course, pure bullshit.
Consumers have changed their shopping behavior due to the pandemic, and some of those changes are relevant for pharma marketers. The days of someone seeing an ad for a prescription drug and rushing to ask their doctor about it have replaced the quest for more information, usually online.
Nationwide, prescription drug spending last year is estimated to be $328 billion among all payers, including private insurance, Medicare Part D, and patients’ out-of-pocket expenses. Reforms to let Medicare negotiate prices, cap out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, and limit insulin cost-sharing would make lifesaving drugs more affordable. Still, the pharma industry is fighting hard to keep it off the table.