Taking stock: increasing the accuracy of new drug revenue forecasts.

Publication: Buyside

Publication Date: 01-APR-03

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2003 Adams Business Media

There are few shortcuts in gathering and interpreting all the relevant information necessary for an objective forecast of a new biotechnology or pharmaceutical product's revenue. Exhaustive analysis and interpretation of scientific, clinical, epidemiologic and market data must be conducted to comprehend the technical and market risk of a company's research pipeline. Even with the recent changes on Wall Street, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector buy-side investors need to ask specific, basic questions to gain access to better information.

ELIGIBLE PATIENT POPULATION

Gaining an understanding of the relevant segments of the patient population is the starting point for improving the accuracy of a new product's forecast. Next, it is important to describe as specifically as possible the patients who will benefit most from a new drug and the circumstances under which the drug will be used. In general, forecasting accuracy can be improved by understanding that for chronic diseases, prevalence represents the upper boundary of the patient population that may benefit from treatment and incidence represents its lower boundary. Somewhere between these numbers exists a pool of patients who are...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.