Generics: A Passage Through Time

Generic equivalents challenging innovative drugs, particularly when the latter have used up their patent life, is something that all research-based pharmaceutical companies have come to accept as part of the future environment. Indeed, generics have been around for quite some time in varying degrees, from market to market.

Moreover, as the health authorities of different countries have come up against the wall of health care "unaffordability," the problems have worsened, with physicians encouraged, one way or another - be it by dictat, limited/positive lists or fundholding - to prescribe the cheapest "equivalent" to help conserve health spending costs.

Given this situation, it is interesting to look at the developments that have shaped the current situation, and drug analysts Jonathan Gelles and Jim Vincent at Wertheim Schroder have published a timetable of events, starting from August 1992, which have contributed. In a recent report on the generic drugs industry, the analysts chronolog events in the major markets, be these government or industry- determined, which have had a significant impact on the way that the market has developed.