Pharma's Innovation Bar and the Need for Less Impersonal Medicine

Key to Pharma's future success will be the ability to identify subpopulations and develop drugs for them. This is not quite the one-drug-for-one-patient fantasy of "personalized medicine," but a significant departure from the one-size-fits-all therapy represented by blockbuster drugs like Lipitor is necessary. This change is driven by increasing costs of large studies, growing demand for more than drug-versus-placebo evidence when a new product wants to take on the standard of care, and more intense attention to safety.