INNOVATION MODELS IN THE BIOPHARMACEUTICAL SECTOR - Innovation in the Biopharmaceutical Industry - page 5

the extent to which these issues can be resolved will determine the sustainability of
the current innovation model. These issues include:
1. What share of public funds for academic and associated scientific and medical
research should be allocated to bioscience in any given country?
2. How should R&D investment be prioritised, given all the diverse global health
challenges?
3. When setting standards for data on efficacy, safety and quality, how might we
best achieve a balance between benefit and risk for patients while still ensuring
that the cost of development for innovators is not prohibitive?
4. How should national patent systems and global patent conventions evolve to
strike a balance between maximising public access to useful new medicines,
and ensuring that returns earned during the period of patent protection provide
incentives for further R&D investment?
5. What approaches will assess the value of new products over their market life
cycle?
6. How can we best achieve a fair and reasonable approach to price differentials
between different population segments both within and across countries?
Each of these issues has been the subject of debate which often has led to major
conflicts between stakeholders. The conflict is not only due to different social and
economic values, but also to a lack of common understanding about the nature of
the innovation process. The following sections examine the limitations of partial
models in the context of changing industry dynamics and government policies and
regulation.
Partial Innovation Models in the Biopharmaceutical Sector
In their landmark text on pharmaceutical innovation, Landau et al. (1999) chart
the progress of innovation in the 20th century and provide an accessible account
of the changes in science, medicine and commerce, all of which have combined
to deliver great advances in therapeutics. In addition, Achilladelis and Antonakis
(2001) have chronicled the growth of national pharmaceutical industries in the US,
Europe and Japan. Through their global reach, “machine like” product development
competences, and efficient integration of these two attributes, these countries and
regions have become today's industry leaders.
In both of these accounts, multiple coupling of the “technology push” and “mar-
ket pull” effects is apparent (Rothwell, 1992a). In its early years the pharmaceutical
industry was dominated largely by “technology push”. Achilladelis and Antonakis
(2001) charted progress over several decades and placed considerable emphasis
upon the parallel development of clusters of innovations across the entire field of