COVID-19 Vaccine Dominates 2021 Pharmaceutical Industry Trends

Future industry-wide trends for pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers are taking root as the industry continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Listen to the full podcast to hear more details. And don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

The biggest trend for 2021 will be the continued rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. As initial inoculations have been slow, manufacturers and government leaders will need to work together for a coordinated effort to have as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. The requisite booster shot adds an added challenge for the COVID-19 vaccine, so manufacturers must ensure there are enough doses for each person to receive both shots in the time frame recommended.

This speaks to a bigger trend across the industry that is the speed of innovation due to extreme collaboration. Coronavirus vaccine development timeline exceeded all industry expectations: two months after the disease first emerged, researchers isolated the virus’ genetic code, and in less than a year, a vaccine was approved.

COVID-19 set the stage for this speed, a recent episode of Healthcare Strategies, an Xtelligent Healthcare Media podcast, highlights. But it begs the question what other innovations, vaccines, and drug treatments could be rolled out with a large, coordinated, and resource-intense response?

Some predict that the timeline for future vaccine development will be similar to the coronavirus, as researchers have more innovative technologies to isolate genes faster and manufacturers have proven prepared to rollout vaccinations as soon as clinical trials proved the drug’s effectiveness. The success seen with the handling of the coronavirus may create the expectation for a similar speed of development in other disease treatments in the future.

A second, but related prediction for 2021, is the growth of biosimilars. These agents are developed in parallel to already FDA approved biologics, using the same active substances. COVID-19 vaccine approval showed the nation how quickly the FDA could act to approve effective substances, so why not the same with biosimilars?

The innovation and collaboration that lead the pharmaceutical industry to unprecedented vaccine turnaround time set the scene for future research and development. With enough resources and collaboration, future vaccine and therapeutic drugs could see similar turnaround times.

But first, manufacturers and government stakeholders have to develop equally as speedy rollout strategies, so the inoculation process can be as quick as the development. Otherwise, fast development will have been for nothing.

Further predictions for other areas of the industry include the shift away from fee-for-service reimbursement as value-based contracting continues to grow and the further integration of behavioral health services with telehealth solutions. To hear more about these predictions and others, check out the full podcast here. And don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.