Page 5 - Health Impact Assessment of policies related to local pharmaceutical industry development towards technology readiness and access to medicines: HIAPP

การประเมินผลกระทบด้านสุขภาพนโยบายการพัฒนาอุตสาหกรรมผลิตยาในประเทศด้านความพร้อมของอุตสาหกรรมและการเข้าถึงยา ค

Abstract

Thai pharmaceutical industry focuses on manufacturing generic drugs and competitive

pricing, while developed countries target drug research and development to compete for
innovation competition in the global market. This has raised a particular question on a

concrete and consistent policy measure to promote the technological potential of the

pharmaceutical production industry in the country and to increase access to medicines. This
study had four objectives:

• To analyze policy gaps related to the pharmaceutical production industry in the country.

• To assess the technological readiness of the pharmaceutical production industry in the

country.

• To analyze the impact of the policy on increasing the technological readiness and drug
expenses.

• To propose measures for building the capacity of the pharmaceutical production industry

in the country and the drug accessibility.
The research team used mixed methods to assess the impact. The findings were

summarized as follows.

1. The result of Thai pharmaceutical production industry situation analysis revealed
that the trend of pharmaceutical manufacturing and import value continuously increased. In

1995, the proportion of drug production in the country was greater than that of imports,

accounted for 65:35. Until 2015, the proportion had completely reversed to 35:65, reflecting
a declining trend in drug security over the past two decades. When considering the potential

of drug manufacturers and importers, they could be divided into 4 groups: 1) The Lion group

including companies with high research and development potential, and the highest sale
values; 2) The Panda group including importers that primarily import brand name drugs or

generic drugs; 3) The Koala group including manufacturers producing less than 50% of new

generic drugs, but the sale values were mainly counted on generic drugs and 4) The Raccoon
group which mainly imports new generic drugs, but mostly the sale values were not very high.

2. The incoherence in pharmaceutical industry development policies, import and the

production technology transfer, investment support, and related laws were found to affect
the readiness for the development of the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore, the research

team proposed the policy sets for the development of the pharmaceutical production