pin just ask, that's what I do for a living.
@trinity and I'm an almost MD. :D; ahahah.
nortonham Healthcare here is profit above all else, just like everything else in this society.
Yeah; I've known people based in the U.S., I've read news, a couple of essays here and there, and I've come to disapprove the US healthcare with all myself. It fosters inequalities, and has no mercy for the victim. It leads people who cannot afford treatment to fall into a vicious cycles whereby their health progressively worsen while their debt raises. No wonder people in the US hate and distrust anything related to it.
All I can say is that if you work in public healthcare outside of US, there's nothing like big money and luxury estate waiting for you.
pin You now have 10 years left to make money. Phase I studies will take 6 months to one year. Phase IIa maybe another year and Phase IIb another one.
Yes, the average cost to a brand-name company of discovering, testing, and obtaining regulatory approval for a new drug, with a new chemical entity, was estimated to be as much as US$2.6 billion in 2014.
Yet, the patent is usually enough to pay back the effort, or nobody would be so reckless to invest in it. It is at the same time a very very risky, and proportionally even more profitable market. The final balance may still take a net loss if in the meantime a given company invested on drugs failing Phase III trials, or retired in Phase IV, so after commercialization. But let's be clear on the fact that the giant ones (e.g.,Pfizer) have enough cash flow at the disposal to be able tolerate very great losses and still manage to survive.
To give a context to the others, once the patent expires, other companies (or even local drugstore), can produce the drug, as long as they sell it under another brand name and keep the active principles and the characteristics of the medicine unaltered (in terms of pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics properties), regardless of the excipients which they decide to put into them. The so called generic drug (equivalent and faithful reproduction of its 'originator'). This predictably helps lowering the overall price of the drug, as the cost of generics will be kept under that of the originator
There's an obscure side effect of patents though, which is easier to spot if you're involved in healthcare.
It will affect most those countries where medicines are commonly prescribed using their trade names rather than the name of the molecule. Many doctors, especially family doctors, tend to get used to prescribe a certain trade name, as consequence of habit (also , remembering alternative names can be very tricky). Some may even trust a certain brand more and be sceptical towards the generic (for no reason, since again, there are very strict requirements to meet if you want to sell a generic). Chemistries are sometimes likelier to have only the originator hand.