How the pharmaceutical industry is confronting a changing landscape

News outlets report on strategies and trends regarding research and development as well as drug pricing.

The Fiscal Times: New Drugs At Lower Costs — Investing In Growth
Over the past decade, the pharmaceutical industry has tested thousands of meds and other treatments and investigated millions of genetic and other biological targets in humans and animals associated with disease. Total spending for public and private investment in life science R&D has approached $1 trillion since 2000, twice what was spent in the 1990s. Yet the number of drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration has dropped from 56 in 1996 to only 23 in 2010. ... This widening disparity has added urgency to the long-standing criticism that big companies and big budgets in the life sciences may actually discourage the sort of creativity and risk taking that is vital to developing a successful drug (Duncan,4/6).

The Philadelphia Inquirer: How Is Pharma Adapting? By Cutting R&D And Raising Prices
One of the major issues that CEOs of large companies and their strategic planners should constantly monitor concerns how their business environment is changing and whether their own company is responding adequately. Here is a quick rundown on pharma's changing landscape and what some of the bigger companies are doing about it (Hoffman, 4/6).