Quintiles find innovation is vital to future of biopharma

A new Economist Intelligence Unit survey sponsored by Quintiles highlights the urgent need for biopharmaceutical industry innovation. The survey comes as the biopharma sector reaches the patent cliff – this year and next, seven of the world’s 15 top-selling drugs, accounting for nearly $50 billion in sales in 2009, will go off-patent.

To investigate corporate strategies in this challenging environment, the Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a global survey of 282 senior executives in the life sciences industry. The findings show that innovation is key to bringing new, more effective products to market to treat diseases.

“Our research shows that no single model will work for all companies, but that top innovators, which are open to insight from many different sources, generated almost twice as many products and NMEs as other companies in the last three years,” said Katherine Dorr Abreu, Managing Editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Disturbingly, however, the survey also indicated that executives were ambivalent about the quality of their existing innovation programs – less than half said their R&D model was capable of meeting their company’s needs; and only about half said that changing their innovation processes was a leading priority.

“The findings of this intriguing survey highlight the urgent need for data-driven innovation as companies work to navigate the challenges of the New Health,” said Paula Brown Stafford, President of Quintiles Clinical Development. “The best innovations will come from firms who look creatively at new technologies to turn their data and information into insight, pursue open partnerships to gain additional expertise, and make better decisions, faster.”