Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are liv­ing in a new era of health­care that is rapid­ly ad­vanc­ing progress im­pact­ing pa­tient out­comes and ex­pe­ri­ences. We’ve seen a re­mark­able pace of trans­for­ma­tion­al in­no­va­tion, ap­plied re­search, and ad­vanced clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment over the last decade.

De­spite this tremen­dous progress, there is much more work to be done, and pa­tients are count­ing on us – now more than ever – to con­tin­ue that mo­men­tum. At the heart of our in­dus­try is a fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing and de­liv­er­ing med­i­cines for some of the world’s most chal­leng­ing dis­eases, in­clud­ing those that have few or no ef­fec­tive treat­ments to­day.

When our in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem works as in­tend­ed, pa­tients – and the en­tire health­care sys­tem – ben­e­fit. But it’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that these med­i­cines are not dis­cov­ered overnight. It takes sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in ad­di­tion to the bright­est minds and thou­sands of hours work­ing with ur­gency and con­vic­tion to de­vel­op the next break­through. This ecosys­tem – like any oth­er – is frag­ile and must be pre­served.

At the Janssen Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Com­pa­nies of John­son & John­son, we play an ac­tive and unique role in each el­e­ment of the in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem that’s dri­ving this progress. This in­cludes our sci­en­tists and re­searchers who are con­stant­ly seek­ing new dis­cov­er­ies, col­lab­o­ra­tive de­vel­op­ment fu­eled by part­ner­ships with biotech, medtech, and acad­e­mia, our work with HCPs and ad­vo­ca­cy groups to en­sure pa­tients can ac­cess and ad­here to our med­i­cines, and our ef­forts cham­pi­oning poli­cies that will pos­i­tive­ly im­pact pa­tients.


Im­age cour­tesy of The Janssen Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Com­pa­nies of John­son & John­son.

In­no­va­tion starts with a good idea – wher­ev­er it comes from. Whether it’s through in­ter­nal dis­cov­ery or ex­ter­nal sources, from a young en­tre­pre­neur or an es­tab­lished or­ga­ni­za­tion, or from an aca­d­e­m­ic or a pol­i­cy­mak­er, it’s the idea that mat­ters most. We are reimag­in­ing how med­i­cines are dis­cov­ered, de­vel­oped and de­liv­ered through in­vest­ments in R&D and part­ner­ships fo­cused on dis­ease ar­eas with se­ri­ous un­met med­ical needs, in­clud­ing on­col­o­gy, im­munol­o­gy, car­dio­vas­cu­lar, meta­bol­ic and reti­nal dis­eases, neu­ro­science, in­fec­tious dis­eases and vac­cines, and pul­monary hy­per­ten­sion.

Our strong in­ter­nal fo­cus on ad­vanc­ing trans­for­ma­tion­al sci­ence with the ap­pli­ca­tion of dif­fer­ent modal­i­ties, in­clud­ing small mol­e­cule, large mol­e­cule, and cell and gene ther­a­pies, match­es the com­mit­ment of stake­hold­ers from across the glob­al in­no­va­tion com­mu­ni­ty. From biotech star­tups and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions and ad­vo­ca­cy or­ga­ni­za­tions – to­geth­er, we stand up for sci­ence, truth, and in­no­va­tion, rec­og­niz­ing the pow­er that our col­lec­tive work can have. It’s this col­lab­o­ra­tion and a shared trust among us that am­pli­fies sci­en­tif­ic ad­vance­ments that el­e­vate the stan­dard of care for pa­tients and dri­ves re­al in­no­va­tion.

But we don’t stop with the sci­ence – we al­so strive to make crit­i­cal treat­ments ac­ces­si­ble to pa­tients who need them and do this amidst an on­go­ing pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion about the val­ue, af­ford­abil­i­ty, and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of trans­for­ma­tion­al med­i­cines.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in a rush to at­tempt cut­ting cost of health­care bud­get line items, new poli­cies are be­ing en­act­ed with­out eval­u­at­ing the full im­pact and un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences on pa­tient ac­cess, pa­tient af­ford­abil­i­ty and fu­ture in­no­va­tion.

For in­stance, as gov­ern­ments and pay­ers look to cut over­all health­care spend­ing, they are not tak­ing a tru­ly com­pre­hen­sive, pa­tient-cen­tric view. New poli­cies that un­der­mine med­ical in­no­va­tion through price set­ting or re­ly on rigid, mech­a­nis­tic Health Tech­nol­o­gy As­sess­ment (HTA) frame­works and meth­ods – fun­da­men­tal­ly stall in­no­va­tion and lim­it ad­vance­ments that would oth­er­wise help pa­tients.

We know there is no glob­al ide­al mea­sure of val­ue in health­care. It varies by coun­try, cul­ture, sys­tem, and pol­i­cy. We can’t lose sight of col­lab­o­rat­ing with lo­cal health sys­tems to match each so­ci­ety’s val­ues with the de­liv­ery of in­no­v­a­tive treat­ments and im­proved, pa­tient-cen­tric out­comes.


Im­age cour­tesy of The Janssen Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Com­pa­nies of John­son & John­son.

As part­ners and ad­vo­cates, we are en­gaged in pur­su­ing the next waves of in­no­va­tion to en­able a broad port­fo­lio of prod­ucts and nav­i­gate pa­tient val­ue and ac­cess. We’re com­mit­ted to a lo­cal­ized ap­proach to mar­ket ac­cess that de­liv­ers life-chang­ing med­i­cines to pa­tients all over the world.

Con­tin­ued progress against dev­as­tat­ing and cost­ly dis­eases de­pends on har­ness­ing the best sci­ence in the world and in­vest­ing in on­go­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion. Equal­ly im­por­tant is the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of med­ical break­throughs to pa­tients that can ben­e­fit from them. It’s up to us as an in­dus­try to gen­er­ate the clin­i­cal and re­al-world ev­i­dence which sup­ports the val­ue of our med­i­cines and cham­pi­on ap­proach­es that en­hance af­ford­abil­i­ty. It is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­vo­cate for poli­cies that pro­mote risk-tak­ing, ac­cess, in­no­va­tion, and most im­por­tant­ly, that keep pa­tient val­ue at the cen­ter.

Any healthy ecosys­tem is de­pen­dent up­on all el­e­ments sup­port­ing and sus­tain­ing each oth­er. By col­lab­o­rat­ing across the in­dus­try, we can con­tin­ue to ad­vance and trans­late the best sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs in­to prac­ti­cal treat­ment op­tions with dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed val­ue. We stand ready to work with stake­hold­ers and many pol­i­cy­mak­ers across the health­care sys­tem to sup­port our glob­al lead­ing health­care in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem. The fu­ture holds so much promise. Through pur­pose-dri­ven col­lab­o­ra­tion we can ac­com­plish tru­ly re­mark­able ad­vances in hu­man health.


Au­thors:

Nau­man Shah,
Glob­al Head,
Janssen Busi­ness
De­vel­op­ment
Christoph Glaet­zer,
Chief Glob­al Val­ue and
Ac­cess Of­fi­cer, The Janssen Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Com­pa­nies of John­son & John­son

Author

The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson