Industries · Healthcare
Pharma, biotech and medical devices
How medicines and medical devices go from the lab to the patient, who chooses and who pays, how companies make money under patents and price controls, the numbers they watch, the main players by region, the trends of 2024 to 2026, and how to crack the cases you will meet.
Key takeaways
- A new medicine takes many years and many failures to reach patients; patents then give its maker a limited time to earn back that cost before cheaper copies arrive.
- A branded medicine earns patients times net price times years of protection; generics earn thin margins on huge volumes; device makers earn on their installed base and the consumables that go with it.
- Pharma cases turn on four things: how many patients can be treated, what price payers will accept, how many years of protection are left, and how likely the science is to work.
- Explain the drug value chain from discovery to patient, and why most drugs in development fail
- Describe the revenue models of branded pharma, generics, biotech licensing, contract manufacturers and medtech
- Size a drug launch with a patient funnel and value a licensing deal with probabilities
- Define the key metrics: pipeline, probability of success, peak sales, loss of exclusivity, gross-to-net, installed base
- Name the main players by region and the main trends of 2024 to 2026, with sources
- Structure the typical pharma and medtech case prompts and avoid the common traps
Lessons
How pharma, biotech and medtech work
The customers (patient, prescriber and payer), the products, the value chain from lab to patient, the odds of success, and patents.
Revenue models, cost structure, unit economics and operations
How branded pharma, generics, biotech, contract manufacturers and medtech make money, what their costs look like, and the key metrics, with a launch and a licensing deal worked through.
Main players, trends 2024 to 2026, regulation and cases
Who the main companies are by region (unranked, sourced), what changed from 2024 to 2026, the regulation you need to know, and how to crack typical pharma and medtech cases.
Worked cases in this module
Look it up
Key terms