Developing a set of indicators to monitor the performance of the pharmaceutical industry

The 2018 OECD report Pharmaceutical Innovation and Access to Medicines noted that public debates about pharmaceutical policy are often marked by a lack of authoritative and commonly accepted information supporting the arguments of the stakeholders involved. A set of agreed indicators would facilitate better informed, more fact-based pharmaceutical policy debates to benefit all stakeholders, including the general public, policy makers, and the industry itself, and could help restore and strengthen trust among them. As part of its broader work agenda on “Increasing the transparency of pharmaceutical markets to inform policies”, the OECD undertook a comprehensive analysis to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a set of core indicators. The selection of indicators was guided by the principle that health policy aims to improve population health, and that access to effective medicines produced by a viable industry is essential to achieving that objective. To help policy makers understand how financial resources in the pharmaceutical industry contribute to the research and development of effective products in areas of need, indicators should cover three domains: inputs, including financial flows into the industry; activity, including financial performance and R&D expenditure and activity; and outputs, capturing product outflows and benefit to health systems. This paper presents the key findings on the feasibility of populating indicators to address the input and activity domains within this framework.