Disease Spends, Medicines and Healthcare budgets – Latest Trends
Since 1950, life expectancy for men and women in the U.S. has increased by a full decade, from 68.2 to 78.2. Breakthroughs in scientific research are driving advances in treatment and prevention strategies, resulting in life expectancy gains and improvements in patient outcomes across disease areas. The chances that a cancer patient will live at least 5 years has increased from 50% (1975-1979) to 68.5% (2002). Heart failure and heart attack death rates fell by nearly half from 1999 to 2005.[iv] Though HIV/AIDS was once a uniformly fatal disease, patients diagnosed today have a range of treatment options that are improving survival and helping to keep them symptom-free for years.
In the last ten years over 300 new medicines have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These medicines are helping patients to live longer, healthier lives. They are transforming many cancers into treatable conditions, reducing the impact of cardiovascular disease, and offering new options for patients with chronic diseases like diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.
——————————————————————————————
According to IMS, global spending on medicines may touch $1.1 trillion by 2015. This is based on a slowing annual growth rate of 3-6 per cent over the next five years. The growth rate in global spending on medicines used to be 6.2 per cent in the past five years. According to IMS, there are a few key reasons for the slowdown in growth rate. These are lower levels of spending for medicines in the US, ongoing impact of patent expiries in developed markets and continuing strong demand in emerging markets.
The changing trend is the rapid shifts in the mix of spending by players between branded products and generics amongst the developed and emerging markets. While aging populations in developed markets may continue to drive incremental spending on brands, which could be more than offset by the impact of patent expiries in the years to come. As a result, spending for branded products in developed markets will remain at the same level in 2015 as in 2010. Globally, market share for branded medicines, which fell from 70 per cent in 2005 to 64 per cent in 2010, is expected to decline further through 2015, to 53 per cent.
IMS projection indicates that expiring patents for branded products will yield as much as $98 billion in net savings to patients in developed countries through 2015, as compared to $54 billion in savings realized in five years upto 2010. And patent expiries will help to save a total of $120 billion to whole world by 2015. Among developed markets, the US will experience the largest expansion of generic spending while Japan will continue to have the lowest share despite serious policy initiatives to increase generic prescribing and dispensing. Two key trends in global consumption of pharmaceuticals are emerging from these set of figures. One is the unprecedented rise in the consumption of generics in the US market, a traditional bastion of branded pharmaceuticals. This is mainly attributed to the drying up of newly patented products in most therapeutic categories in the market. Certainly this growing shift to generic buying has brought a sharp cut in medical expenditure to growing number of patients.
Sources:
- http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/04/12/uk-india-pharma-idUKLNE73B00O20110412
- http://eatg.org/eatg/Global-HIV-News/Pharma-Industry/Generics-will-halve-global-annual-drug-spending-growth-to-2015
