Key productivity factors in drug discovery and development projects

The field of health care is an important element of the economic and social life of every country in the world combining demographic, economic and epidemiological, ethical and social challenges. Spending on the development of new therapies has been increasing over the past two decades, and the amount of drugs approved by regulatory agencies has remained stable. Literature does not provide adequate knowledge about the reasons of the productivity drop that impacts the competitive advantage of the companies taking part in the project’s race to the market (Schuhmacher et al., 2022), and it therefore seems crucial to analyse the factors determining high productivity of the pharmaceutical industry to adjust further actions ensuring the highest quality of health care systems, focusing on the wellbeing of the patient and the development of increasingly safer medicines. To address this need the author performed systematic literature review followed by structured interviews with 14 experts working globally in the field of drug development to determine productivity factors in drug discovery research and development projects, with the goal of answering questions related to which factors play a key role in the productivity of scientific organisations and the relationship between the factors, providing an insight into which parts of drug discovery ecosystem can increase a chance to address highly unmet medical needs of patients waiting for novel, safe and effective forms of treatment. As a result of the research 22 key productivity factors were defined and clustered into 4 categories: scientific, managerial, business, environmental and relations between the factors were discussed.