Today, although a number of new and state of the art drugs is regularly being developed, and brought to the market at a reasonably rapid pace, their access to the majority of the global population has still remained a huge challenge. One of the key access barriers continue to remain exorbitant prices of these drugs.
Keeping commensurate pace with gradual improvement in the pinpointed diagnosis of various diseases with modern diagnostics, processes, devices and techniques, fueled by increasing health awareness within a sizeable section of the population, more patients are now aspiring for access to a better quality of life, and greater productivity at work. This is happening all over the world, though with varying degree and magnitude.
Consequently, there has been a sharp increase in the demand for healthcare, which has caused a huge bottleneck in the overall healthcare delivery process, for various reasons. The huge gap between the availability of high-tech drugs/healthcare services, and their access to the general population, mostly due to affordability reasons, is going north at a rapid pace.
Two-pronged cost containment pressure:
This unfettered ascending trend is creating primarily the following two types of cost containment pressure:
- Being driven purely by the economical reasons, the Governments and other payers have started taking stringent cost-containment measures, bringing huge pricing pressure, especially on the drugs and medical device manufacturers.
- In countries, such as, India, where the ‘Out of Pocket’ expenditure on healthcare in general, and the medicines in particular, is hovering around 70 percent, the patients, several Governments have started announcing drug price control policy to protect the health interest of patients.
However, currently, only some piecemeal measures are being initiated, including in India, where a holistic approach for all, such as, Universal Health Care (UHC) and several other similar options, are long overdue.
Three different remedial measures:
In my view, consideration of either of these three following approaches, or an innovative blend of these, would enable the Governments to address this pressing issue, remove the existing bottle neck, and thereby bridge the healthcare access gap, holistically:
A. Fast implementation of Universal Health Care (UHC).
B. Closer look at the entire Pharmaceutical Value Chain with a resolve to work out innovative, game-changing solutions to reduce cost of each of its critical components, significantly.
C. Effectively addressing the emerging need of Patient-Centricity.
A. Fast implementation of Universal Health Care (UHC):
I have already discussed UHC in one of my articles titled, “Universal Health Coverage: The Only Alternative To Drug Price Control in India?”, published in this Blog on November 9, 2015.
B. Cost containment with 3D printing:
A report of IMS Health, published on November 18, 2015, forecasts the increase of total global spend for pharmaceuticals by US$ 349 billion on a constant-dollar basis, compared with US$182 billion during the past five years. It also indicated, more than half of the world’s population will live in countries where the use of medicine will exceed one dose per person per day by 2020, up from 31 percent in 2005, as the “medicine use gap” between the developed and the emerging markets narrows.
This steep ascending trend would eventually affect the pharma ‘Value Chain’ in a significant way, throwing open several path-breaking high-technology based options, with impressive favorable impact on the general costs of medicines. 3D-printing technology is expected to play a significant role in this initiative.
Before proceeding further, let me zero-in on a few critical components, as follows, of the pharma ‘Value Chain’, as I see visualize these:
- Drug innovation (R&D)
- Manufacturing
- Marketing
- Supply Chain
According to my understanding, at least in 3 of the above 4 ‘Value Chain’ components, there is an immense potential of leveraging 3D printing technology effectively, and in a big way.
In my article of January 11, 2016, published in this Blog, titled “3D Printing: An Emerging Game Changer in Pharma Business”, I have already discussed the game changing impact of 3D Printing technology on the drug discovery process, drug manufacturing strategy, and supply Chain effectiveness in the pharma business.
Hence, I prefer not to dwell on those areas, yet again, here. Instead, I shall briefly deliberate on the application of 3D Printing technology to effectively address the emerging need of ‘Patient-Centricity’ with an interesting and a very recent example.
C. Improving ‘Patient-Centricity’ with 3D printing:
At this stage, there is a need to understand what exactly is the ‘’Patient-Centricity’. It seems to be a popular buzzword now with the health care related companies, primarily to give an impression that they are really focusing on ‘Patient-Centricity’................
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