A recent Strategy & report suggests that the “winners” in emerging pharma markets will know how to best balance their global competencies with tailored approaches for local markets.
The pandemic made medicine accessibility challenging worldwide. High levels of drug consumption and limited local pharmaceutical manufacturing have highlighted opportunities for pharma companies
Glocalisation gained prominence as pharmaceutical companies decentralised their R&D and production activities with a focus on exploring and developing products for the local markets by establishing facilities in many locations across the globe.
Growing demand for advanced medicines in emerging economies, drug manufacturers aiming to reduce costs and the growing challenges with clinical trial recruitment in mature markets drove the globalisation of pharma. A few key factors that facilitated globalisation for pharma companies are US/EU marketing authorisation (MA) acquisition, dossier and technology transfer, new formulations with US and EU regulatory compliance, local pharmaceutical manufacturing plant acquisition etc. However, a surge in M&A activity in the Asian pharma industry also contributed to the significant growth of the industry in the region. In developing countries, globalisation resulted in a decrease in exportation and domestic production, with an increase in importation of pharmaceuticals and a rise in prices and expenditures.
Meanwhile, continued growth of the industry with increased demand, with the development and commercialisation of antibodies and next-generation medicines, such as antibody-drug conjugates and cell and gene therapies have led to increase in number of trials. This rising demand of populations in clinical trials has been easily handled with the glocalisation of the market. Glocalisation will also continue to be driven in part by governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local entrepreneurs.
Increased outsourcing strategies by Clinical Research Organisations have demanded the global companies to explore local markets that have talent, resources and facilities. Many APIs found in generic and even branded small molecule drugs are now produced in China, India and other emerging markets, and biosimilars are increasingly produced across the world.
In making global companies more effective competitors, glocalisation should be in practice focussing the local markets as well. The advent of technology solutions in the areas such as automation, Blockchain, AI, ML and Advanced Analytics, IoT are playing a key role in streamlining operations, enhancing manufacturing, improving production processes for the pharma industry.
The latest issue covers an article title ‘The Glocalisation Challenge’, where the author Brian D Smith, Principal Advisor, PragMedic talks about the promise of glocalisation and its challenges. He also tells that when a business is global but its markets are local, it imperative for companies to glocalise. We will cover a series of articles on this topic in the forthcoming issues and as always I believe you will find this edition insightful.
Prasanthi Sadhu, Editor, Pharma Focus Asia
