Comment by djoldman
12 days ago
> biomedical progress, especially in therapeutics, has become less productive despite staggering advances in basic science.
> the inflation-adjusted cost to bring a new drug to market roughly doubles every nine years: a trend that has held since the 1950s.
Presumably they're getting at numbers of new drugs brought to market.
I'm interested in a different metric: Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) saved due primarily to new drugs brought to market.
Who cares if 1 million drugs come to market and they do little to improve lives? We'd prefer 10 that had more QALYs.
Useful perspective. I think viable second sources can also lower costs. They might not increase QUALYS but would probably lower the cost of existing QUALYS so that money could be spent on other needs.