Early Market Testing Can Benefit Health Care - BusinessWeek

Early Market Testing Can Benefit Health Care - BusinessWeek

Before seeking FDA approval, drug and medical device companies could avoid costly mistakes by seeing if their ideas will fly with patients
By Stephen Wunker and Joe Sinfield

Health-care companies often think experimentation is for the lab bench. Drug discovery and development requires remorseless trial-and-error—and only about 1 in every 10,000 compounds created will eventually make it to market. But once a molecule emerges from that process, experimentation tends to cease.

With tight regulatory supervision and a product pipeline that typically yields only a small handful of new launches each year, pharmaceutical companies invest heavily in the few products that do emerge. A typical drug launch can easily cost tens of millions of dollars or more. With patent expiration dates dictating the product life cycle literally to the day, firms want to maximize sales while they can. ..

|| shared via AsiaClassifiedToday.com / Geesparks.com / PhilippinesMarketPlace.com