Surprise pandemic lessons for pharma

Ask people in most western nations to think back to 2019 and consider what they would have said then about the potential impact of a pandemic on their everyday lives and my guess is that the vast majority of us would have had little insight into what would happen.

Residents of Southeast Asia who had experienced the SARS outbreak in 2002-04 would likely have had a much better understanding, but even they could not have imagined just how disorganised the response would be in many other parts the world. The unpredictability of the progress of the pandemic continues to affect our business and personal lives in many different ways. It also continues to surprise us.

Over the last year I have written regularly about what our team at IQVIA sees in the developing picture of commercial activities in the life sciences industry across the world. Throughout this journey there have been a number of surprising developments that I think have important implications and opportunities for our industry in the years ahead.

The vaccines’ success

I recall conversations with colleagues last March, in the early days of the pandemic, about our expectations of when effective vaccines might be available. Past experience led most of us to place an optimistic scenario at 12 months, but more realistically 18 months. How wrong we were.

• Read the full article in pharmaphorum's Deep Dive digital magazine