As Big Pharma pursues more specialty drugs, personalized medicine is regarded as a potential boon for the industry. Giving selected patients drugs designed for their particular genetic make-up could be a way to better target healthcare spending, saving governments and insurers money--and ensuring that drugmakers get their products backed by payers.
But targeting small groups of patients with drugs, rather than the mass market, requires an entirely different skill set, and drugmakers aren't equally prepared for that approach. Or so says the consulting firm Diaceutics, which has released a new review of Big Pharma's readiness for personalized medicine.
According to the report, Roche and Novartis are the two major pharma firms best positioned for personalized medicine. Both companies have the capacity to "upset normal competitive dynamics in a specific therapy area by shaping payers', regulators' and physicians' expectations of value," Diaceutics' Peter Keeling said in a statement.
Roche already has capacity for innovation in that area, the firm says, while Novartis has recently focused more time and resources on diagnostics and personalized drugs. Other companies with the potential to capitalize on personalized medicine are AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer, Diaceutics' report finds.
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