TECH OUTLOOKAPRIL -201919CXO INSIGHTSThe global pharmaceutical industry has grown in modern times, since post World War II, into one of the highest value and most profitable industries in the global economy in terms of annual sales. These now exceed $1 trillion and market capitalization approaching $3 trillion as of 2018. If our industry was a country, it is close to being a top 10 economy. Even more important to society, is that the industry is considered to be the key driver of investment in healthcare innovation and solutions, contributing to the significant increase in human life expectancy in the last 25 ­ 35 years.As an industry, since first forming as a defined international industry in the 19th century, when apothecaries moved into wholesale production of drugs such as morphine, quinine, and strychnine in the middle of the 19th century, and dye and chemical companies established research labs and discovered medical applications for their products in the US and Europe, the path to the sheer value and impact on humanity really accelerated to what it is today from the mid-20th century. Our industry has been characterized by significant technical innovation and disruption to its models every 10 ­ 15 years especially when it was largely a chemical industry. However, since the late 1980s, fast acceleration of biotech and biopharmaceutical innovations have seen the greatest disruption in the industries' history and it has been building even more rapidly this decade.By David Kwasha, APAC Region Head VP & Managing Director, Alexion Pharmaceuticals IncIn fact, we are witnessing an industry that has been largely driven commercially via providing solutions for chronic disease and slowing down the impact of disease, but not curing many diseases we treated move to a completely different model of innovative solutions. Health industry worldwide is now in its most significant phase of innovation and disruption of historic models with the milestones of the human genome being mapped and testing being possible in any human at affordable costs and for the biopharmaceutical industry the first genetic therapy being approved for use in 2018.Bio-Pharmaceutical Solutions for Improving Quality and Extension of Life
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