Inovação tecnológica na indústria farmacêutica: Diferenças entre a Europa, os EUA e os países farmaemergentes

Abstract

The pharmaceutical sector has been dominated by multinational companies from Europe and the USA-the so called Big Pharma. However, the importance of pharmaceutical emerging markets, especially China and Brazil, is a consensus in the literature, and these 'pharmerging' countries will play a vital role in the sustainable growth of the pharmaceutical industry. This study aimed to develop a technological and industrial mapping of the pharmaceutical sector based on information from international patent databases (WIPO and Derwent) between 1996 and the last year of record (2013). After that, a numerical analysis for prediction of scenarios was conducted using the Method of Least Squares and an algorithm was implemented in MATLAB. The results confirmed the leadership of Europe and the USA in the pharmaceutical sector, highlighting the innovative capacity of Hoffmann-La Roche. However, an important growth of Brazilian (41%) and Chinese (27%) patents was estimated, suggesting the beginning of technological and scientific dissemination and increased competition in the pharmaceutical segment due to the advancement of the 'pharmerging' countries, mainly China.