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PHARMACEUTICAL EXECUTIVE

Pharma 50

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Pharma 50 Insight:

The Accelerating Growth of Specialty Markets
By Waseem Noor and Michael Kleinrock, IMS

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highlight of the Pharma 50 ranking over the last few years is the steady upward trajectory of companies with a strong franchise in specialty medicines. Specialty markets are appealing to companies that have a strong research and development pipeline, are prioritizing serious unmet medical needs, and are taking a more personalized approach to the traditional relationship between physicians and patients. This is why we find it appropriate to examine in more


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Pharma 50
Our analysis finds three answers to the question. First, building a truly global business requires developing assets in the specialty segment, if only because sales and volumes of these drugs are increasing in almost every geography.
Market demand is turning more towards specialty products, and for the top integrated players represented in the Pharma
50, being able to meet this demand is an acute strategic imperative. Second, the market channel structure within the specialty field is changing, as more products are being sold in the retail sector rather than in hospital or specialty clinics. This opens significant new possibilities in terms of a broader audience reach, with a strong “willingness to pay” component.
Finally, we are seeing therapeutic class concentration, with a potential impact on the future competition: the top seven

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In the EU5, there seems to be a higher proportion of specialty product usage than in the US, and a rise in both hospital and retail sales. This is being driven by adoption of newer therapies under the single-payer structure of these markets. therapeutic areas in specialty now seem to account for about 75% of all sales of specialty products.
An important caveat in interpreting all figures in this article is that IMS sales data is based on