Managing Ex-Patent Strategies under the Reimbursement System of Taiwan: The Case of Antidepressants
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Chiang, Meng-Hsuan
Abstract
Depression is the disease that has brought the most serious burden of disability of adults in the world. WHO also claimed depression to be the second largest source of costs of disease treatment. During the past 50 years, the majority of pharmaceutical companies were striving to develop antidepressants and becoming prosperous by earning monopolistic profits trough patent protection. However, as time goes, their patent protection have been gone through the end and generic drugs gradually replaced the original ones and gain lion share in the antidepressant market. For the patented drugs, making strategic effort to prolong the monopolistic advantages so as to continuously harvest their blockbusters becomes a critical challenge for major pharmaceutical companies to survive and sustain researches.
Through various phased of field work, this study provides an analytical framework of formulating ex-patent strategies for the major multinational pharmaceutical companies in Taiwan who are in antidepressants drug market. To achieve our research goals, we first explore factors that affect sales of patented antidepressants within the institutional context of Taiwan health policy and reimbursement system. These factors include medical classification, approved pricing, limit of indication, purchasing process, and allocation of drug benefit, among others. Next, market and industrial analyses of antidepressants were conducted to create a basis for developing the ex-patent co-opetition strategies.
Based on the field interviews, we conclude two types of ex-patent strategies that are adopted by the existing players, focused and value-based strategies, and found that few of them would be sustainable in the nearly future. We then adopt the value net framework and develop seven value-based strategies, including product line extension, layer innovation, direct-to-customer marketing, patent arrangement, secondary brand license, localized R&D alliance, and outsourcing, for the major multinational pharmaceutical companies operating in Taiwan. Evaluations of generics’ responses and strategy feasibility are also discussed.
Subjects
Ex-patent
Co-opetition Strategy
Antidepressants
Type
thesis
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