Structure and activities to drive growth and profitability during pharmaceutical new product planning

With the prospect of health-care reform still looming, pharmaceutical and biotech companies face tremendous pressure to keep the costs of their products down.  

However, developing a new drug requires vast funding:  the typical drug development cycle, from Petri dish to pharmacy shelf, can consume approximately 12-15 years and cost up to $1 billion.  Clinical trials represent the most expensive phase of compound development, sometimes accounting for 75% of total development expenses.  In fact, late-stage clinical trials can cost upwards of $5,000 per patient per day over a several year span.  

It is estimated that only 1 in 10,000 compounds tested are ever approved by the FDA and reach the consumer market.  When a project is halted late in the development cycle, companies stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars – a sum the company is forced to recoup in the pricing structure of the future medications it brings to market.  

A highly functioning New Product Planning (NPP) group is a company's first line of defense against devastating losses.  To be effective, NPP groups must work across all facets of the developmental cycle.  Indeed, NPP teams interact with key stakeholders throughout the R&D, Medical Affairs, Marketing, and Sales functions, and are often responsible for such crucial activities as projecting market share, developing potential product profiles, cultivating relationships with thought and key opinion leaders, and managing the strategic publication of clinical data.

Best Practices, LLC has released a timely study to enable NPP leaders to act proactively – instead of reactively – to the pricing pressures gathering on the horizon.  This study, Pharmaceutical New Product Planning: Structure and Activities to Drive Growth and Profitability, identifies the full set of activities that NPP groups perform across the development cycle as well as the optimal structure and roles of NPP groups.

The research, with a benchmark class that features Abbott, Lilly, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis among others, examines dozens of NPP developmental activities in terms of timing during the development process, intended outcomes and value for the organization. In addition, the study details the strengths and weaknesses of various NPP organizational structures and how the operational characteristics of the NPP function evolve as a company matures.

SOURCE Best Practices, LLC