Lilly CEO Calls for a Health Care Policy Environment That Promotes Medical Innovation
In a keynote address at the Financial Times
Lechleiter noted that "Medicines account for only a fraction of health care spending — about 10 percent in
Lechleiter, who also is chairman of the
"Innovation requires long-term thinking, especially in an enterprise that typically requires more than a decade to bring a new medicine to patients," said Lechleiter. "We've stayed the course through challenging times in the past by following the science, and we need to maintain that same perspective today."
Lechleiter urged a similar long-term approach to health care policy and warned that short-term focus on costs and budgets could imperil long-term gains from innovation.
Emphasizing that achieving breakthroughs is neither easy nor guaranteed, Lechleiter explained that the cost of developing a new medicine has risen dramatically and that new drug approvals were significantly lower in the past decade than they were in the 1990s. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical industry is facing sharp declines in revenues from branded medicines that are losing patent protection, reducing companies' ability to invest in R&D.
Lechleiter said that we can realize the potential of scientific advances that offer the prospect of new therapies, but only if we maintain an environment where innovation can thrive.
"Without a supportive policy environment, one that reflects a long-term perspective on the role of medical innovation in health care, there is in fact no guarantee that the work of discovering and developing new medicines will go on at all."
Lechleiter said the pharmaceutical industry must continue to advocate for policies that sustain and encourage innovation, such as intellectual property protection, open access to health care markets and market-based pricing, and a regulatory system that keeps pace with 21st century science.
"The good news is, time and time again, medical innovation has reset the standard for what we can expect from the health care system and from human life," said Lechleiter. "Indeed, I believe we are only at the beginning of what will be known as the biomedical century."
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Lilly, a leading innovation-driven corporation, is developing a growing portfolio of pharmaceutical products by applying the latest research from its own worldwide laboratories and from collaborations with eminent scientific organizations. Headquartered in
C-LLY
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