Assessing the Research Productivity of the Pharmaceutical Industry: Pipeline Analysis.

In recent times, the low productivity of research and development (R&D) in the conventional pharmaceutical industry has become a worldwide problem. The research stage is particularly placed as the uppermost stage in the course of pharmaceutical R&D and has been recognized as facing difficulties in the practice of effective project management. We assessed the capability of several drug companies in research productivity, investigating a number of development pipelines of drug companies in Japan and presenting a number of self-created pipelines that were the output for the research stage. We also discussed the impact of creation of our original pipeline or of the introduction from other companies on the financial situation of each pharmaceutical company. We discovered a strong correlation between the number of self-created pipelines and the segment operating profit of each company. We also suggested that the number of self-created pipelines might become an index for discussing research productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]