IQVIA Executive Director Discusses Global Use of Medicines 2024 Report - Part 1

Where was the data for this report sourced from?

When the IQVIA Institute pulls together this annual Trend Report, we get to tap into all of the great resources available at IQVIA. That includes services such as Midas, market prognosis, market dynamics. We also within the institute, overlay a number of our proprietary analytics to make the data sing, so to speak. And then that is what goes into the report that we've published.

What were some of the key findings of the report?

There are a lot of findings in the report. But let me maybe focus on three key findings. First, is the notion that we're seeing more patients getting access to better medicines. And this sometimes goes across the narrative that we often hear about patients not being able to get access to, to medicines, or being prevented through various measures, from getting access to better medicines. And while we'll show some of that is true, when we actually look at the data and peel things back, we see that the biggest driver of growth in the global market for pharmaceuticals, which is expected to grow over the next five years, is a shift in the mix of medicines that patients are receiving. And that mix essentially translates to patients being able to access better medicines, often those medicines, they bring more value to the patient, they may carry a higher price point. But that is the major driver of growth that we can foresee in the in the market over the next five years. So, we're talking about that as this is a good thing. Because we are seeing more patients being able to access better medicines.

The second key finding in the report is that we are raising our forecast growth for the global pharmaceutical market, compared to what we said a year ago. So, this is the five years now through 2028. We've raised our forecast growth rate by two percentage points, to five to 8%. Somewhere in that range growth over the next five years that's at a list price basis. If we look at things on a net price basis, which we can do for the US market, we have also raised our forecast growth rate in the US by three percentage points to a growth rate between two and 5% over the next five years. So, this was a surprise to us in terms of the extent to which we have re forecast things for high levels of growth. A lot of that is driven by very strong growth that we saw come through in 2023, significantly higher than we had forecast. And when we look at the future drivers of growth, then that puts in the takes their puts being new drugs being launched at record numbers into the into the pharmaceutical market takes in terms of the impact of losses of exclusivity and so on. When we balance all that out with foreseeing and forecasting, higher levels of growth than we were a year ago.

I think the third key finding here is still around the very wide difference in the in the use of medicines when you look around the world. So, one of the things that we've done in our report is toted up the defined daily doses of medicines consumed globally. And then when we look at that on a population adjusted basis, we still see there's a five-to-six-fold difference in the per capita use of medicines between some of the high-income countries in particular Japan, Western Europe, as well as the US and the low- and middle-income countries, particularly Africa and the Middle East as well as parts of Asia and Latin America. Those gaps are as wide as they've ever been. And while everyone is able to receive more medicines now than in the past and will receive more medicines in 2028 than today. They the magnitude of the difference between what we see happening in low- and middle-income countries and what we see happening in high income countries is as large as ever. And that's, that's a concern, I think, for all of us as global citizens in terms of this disparity between different parts of the world in terms of their ability to access and get the benefits from pharmaceuticals.

Can you speak on the relationship between the significant projected growth in spending and growth in diabetes and global obesity?

Certainly the, the newer drugs indicated for weight loss are getting a lot of attention and are potentially transformative. You know, I'm old enough to remember when the talk was always around obesity being the thing that would drive health systems out of existence, right, we can't afford the cost of obesity. The good news is now we've got, you know, several drugs in the market and a lot more in the pipeline, with clinical evidence of really remarkable reductions in weight and remarkable reductions in some of the consequences of obesity, including in the cardiovascular realm. So here we are, with these drugs, enormous demand for them. They are a contributor to growth over the next five years, but probably less than many would imagine. So, when we look at the total market globally, we're forecasting about $600 billion in total growth on a list of price bases, between 2023 and 2028.

So over that five years, the total market will expand about $600 billion. We think between the obesity drugs and diabetes drugs together, they'll contribute 70 to 80 billion of that growth. So, you know, over 10%, less than 20%. So, an important part of the growth but definitely not the overwhelming amount that that some have talked about. And we're going to remember that oncology remains the area that is contributing the most to growth over the next five years.