Pharmaceutical companies are facing several major interrelated challenges, the most strategic being the decline in R&D productivity resulting in empty product pipelines to replace products nearing patent expiry. A common response has been mergers and acquisition of competitors and biotechnology firms, but rather than resolving the problems, this has created new ones. While biotechnology promise...

BACKGROUND Medical students are targeted by the pharmaceutical industry and are exposed to their marketing strategies even in the preclinical years of study. The marketing strategies used by pharmaceutical companies with physicians are also applied to students, affecting their future prescribing behaviour, and include low-cost non-educational gifts, travel expenses and conferences registration ...

Opinion Compared with other industries, the pharmaceutical industry is driven by R&D and high regulations, as well increasing product complexity quality requirements [1]. Indeed, it usually takes more than 10 years for a new flagship drug to be successfully developed, approved, launched into market. Moreover, costs at least US $1 billion develop [2]. The long development testing cycle, uncertai...

The aim of this study was to explore the reasons behind medicine shortages from the perspective of pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical wholesalers in Finland. The study took the form of semi-structured interviews. Forty-one pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical wholesalers were invited to participate in the study. The pharmaceutical companies were the member organizations of Pharm...