Medical Translation Insight

It's not just clinical research that is going global. Pharma sales are also moving from established, mostly Western countries to emerging markets.

The New York Times, reporting on research by IMS Health [PDF link], mentioned that "drug sales in China will outpace those of France and of Germany, while Brazil will be buying more medications than Britain".

Together, the 17 countries listed in the report will contribute as much as $60 billion to pharma industry growth over the next few years:



So, what's the bad news?

The report puts it this way:

"[M]ost global drug companies remain under exposed and under-performing in the pharmerging markets, despite the fact that these new growth engines account for nearly half of the global population."

Indeed, major pharmaceutical companies are significantly under-performing in emerging (aka "pharmerging") markets. The top 15 drug companies together derive less than 10 percent of their sales from emerging markets, according to the IMS report.

The report suggests three key items for drug companies to consider:

1. Acknowledge and address the urgency
2. Understand and embrace the complexity
3. Adapt and tailor your strategy

It's probably no surprise that these suggestions sound an awful lot like the prescription to take advantage of the U.S. Hispanic market.

And IF drug makers wake up and tailor their strategies to the specific dynamics and challenges of each market, providers of medical translation services can look forward to getting more work in those languages.


Are you on Twitter? Follow us at @fxtrans.