Second Chances
Helping people lead healthier lives is what we strive to do every day at Janssen. Our efforts ‘behind the scenes, in our labs’ contribute to seeing millions of patients around the world cured from disease or sufficiently treated to lead their lives as normal. In many ways, providing patients with a second chance at a healthy life.
Multiple aspects of our business help us deliver on that promise every day. Cutting-edge science, ground-breaking discovery, world-class research and development efforts and multi-sectoral collaborations are progressing our transformative pipeline and helping tackle the unmet healthcare needs of millions of patients across multiple diseases.
These elements of scientific innovation may remain largely invisible to patients, but their impact is enormous.
Over the last few decades, because of the collective efforts of the biopharmaceutical sector, we’ve seen an increase in life expectancy and quality of life for various types of cancers, HIV, diabetes, and cardio-vascular disease, and contributed to the eradication and control of vaccine preventable diseases like polio, small pox, maternal and neonatal tetanus and measles.
In India, the power of medical innovation is championed by the Organization of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) of which we are a proud member. The OPPI represents the research-based pharmaceutical companies in India and is committed to supporting India’s healthcare objectives by making innovative, life-saving medicines available in India and engaging with stakeholders to support sustainable healthcare access solutions for patients.
In a recently released film called ‘Second Chance’ launched in honour of OPPI’s 51st Annual Day celebrations, patients shared the profound impact that access to medicine has had on their lives as they live with serious illness and work daily to overcome or manage their disease.
The film offers a reminder of the importance of modern-day medicine and the power of medical innovation, which is so often best told by those whose lives have been transformed thanks to medical science.
Everyone featured had quite literally been given a second chance at life thanks to the medicines they take to treat their condition.
It’s a privilege to play a part in creating a healthier world, but the path to get to that state is rarely smooth sailing.
The process is complex, timely and costly, and fraught with scientific failures and access, reimbursement and pricing challenges.
A few fast facts quite quickly put the medical innovation journey into perspective.
It takes on average 12 years for a treatment to make it from laboratory to the medicine cabinet. And for all research and development efforts, only five in 5,000 prospective treatments that enter preclinical testing progress to human trials.
Of these, only one tested in people is approved. The chance for a new therapy to actually reach patients is only one in 5,000.
Clearly the odds are not great. But we are more than happy to take our chances on that when the potential reward for humanity is so great.
Our investment in R&D continues as a core pillar of our company strategy, and in 2016 this totaled USD 9 billion.
As the world’s health landscape evolves, we’re evolving too, ever mindful that as life expectancy increases, we face new challenges associated with an ageing population and the rise of lifestyle diseases, along with emerging healthcare threats like Zika and Ebola.
The worldwide prevalence of Alzheimer’s for example is expected to grow fourfold by 2050, to 106.8 million. In Asia alone Alzheimer’s will affect approximately 62 million people, representing a percentage increase from 48% to 59%, without R&D driven solutions and adequate intervention from the pharmaceutical sector and governments and stakeholders combined.
We are also employing new approaches to address innovation and access challenges, from technology and government partnerships, NGO and patient group engagement, bespoke pricing models, community awareness and capacity building and utilizing real-world big data analysis to help us better identify emerging trends and potential solutions.
Our quest to cure some of the world’s hardest to treat diseases remains resolute.
The reality though, is that medical innovation takes time, dedication, significant financial investment, perseverance and in many cases a large amount of failure before ultimate success.
And every life that benefits is the result of millions of dollars of investment and years and years of research by dedicated scientists.
As a scientist, I know that for each medicine that enters our lives, fellow scientists have dedicated theirs.
I know too what it takes to be a truly transformational innovator in the medical sciences sphere.
I’m lucky enough to play a role in that at Janssen with a team equally as passionate as I am about the value of medicine.
Inspired by patients in India and all over the world, our unwavering commitment is to bring better health outcomes to the millions of patients who need it most.
I know without doubt, that medical science can and will discover treatments for a newer, healthier world. For so many, the prospects of a second chance are made real by the power of medical innovation.
At Janssen, it’s in our DNA to deliver on this. For patients today and for patients tomorrow.
#DNAofcare
Vikram is Head of Medical Affairs and Infectious Diseases for Janssen India. As a physician, specializing in Internal Medicine, Vikram has extensive medical experience across multiple therapeutic areas and geographies, including India, South Africa, the Middle-East and North Africa. Within the pharmaceutical industry, Vikram has led a wide range of research, advocacy, education, capacity building and patient support programs. Most recently, Vikram has supported and led a number of major public health programs in partnership with national and state governments, most notably in the area of tuberculosis.