Patents, Pricing, Competition and the Future of Medical Innovation

Developing a new medicine requires enormous investment, years of research and clinical testing, and acceptance of extraordinary technical and commercial risk. Patent protection has traditionally provided the exclusivity necessary to justify that investment. But pricing pressures, government intervention, competition policy, shortened effective exclusivity and persistent criticism of pharmaceutical patent portfolios are changing the economic assumptions on which life sciences innovation has historically been built.

This panel will examine the increasingly complicated relationship among patents, drug pricing, competition and investment in future medicines. Panelists will discuss how policy choices influence where capital flows, whether incentives are beginning to favor certain technologies or development strategies over others, and what happens to follow-on research, new indications and other valuable innovation when the opportunity to earn a return is compressed. The discussion will focus on the larger innovation bargain: how do we promote affordability and competition today without sacrificing the treatments and cures patients will need tomorrow?