All-round pressure
Sometimes it feels like we are being attacked from all sides, with everyone we interact with wanting something different from us. Keeping everybody happy at the same time, while maintaining what is best for ourselves, can seem impossible.
The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, has an enormous number of different pressures bearing down on it, and many stakeholders it has to keep happy. Shareholders want profits to be maximised to get as much return on their investment as they can. Employees want stable jobs, with due recognition for their efforts, both financial and otherwise. Consumers want new drugs to treat incurable diseases, and more effective drugs with less side-effects than those already available. And those that pay the drug bills, generally governments, want these treatments to be marketed at the lowest price possible.
Governmental pressures, in particular, are causing concern to pharma companies in the UK. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence, or Nice, is seen as an extra regulatory hurdle that must be cleared before a drug can be widely prescribed and start making money. GlaxoWellcome's flu drug Relenza, for example, hit the Nice barrier, with the agency wanting extensive effectiveness data that would only be available once the drug had been widely prescribed in patients.
Pressures like these have led to pharmaceutical companies threatening that if the UK government doesn't play fair by them, then they will shift their research efforts to other countries where the administration is more sympathetic to their needs and concerns. The UK has always been a major player in pharmaceutical research and manufacture. Pharmaceuticals are also an important part of the UK economy, contributing a positive trade balance estimated at over £2bn. So if big drug companies were to up sticks and move elsewhere, the detrimental effect on UK plc would be immense.
Such concerns led to a meeting between the UK prime minister and the ceos of AstraZeneca, GlaxoWellcome and SmithKline Beecham. The result of this meeting was the formation of the Pharmaceutical Industry Competitiveness Task Force (PICTF), which has just published its final report.
Among the recommendations to come out of the report is an undertaking to review Nice's performance and methods of operation. It also states that the probable impact of new policy directions should continue to be considered, prior to implementation, alongside the pharmaceutical industry. Dialogue is good — and if both industry and government can understand the pressures facing the other side and find a way to work together in a way that makes them both happy then it can only be positive for both.