When it comes to anti-cancer drugs, I know this all too well. After three years of graduate school and three years of struggling to do it, you're just about done with the lab phase of research before you graduate, and you're still a hundred thousand miles away from actually becoming a drug. Medical devices are indeed faster than drugs to update, may be mainly due to the following aspects:
Different R & D cycle and difficulty
Usually a drug, including antitumor drugs, the R & D cycle is generally 8 to 14 years, especially the development of new anticancer drugs, the failure rate is very high, and must be through the I, II, III phase clinical trials and can only be marketed after being validated by a large number of people.
Medical devices are different, medical devices are divided into three categories, only two or three need to do some clinical trials, but only a small sample of verification. And the hospital inspection equipment belongs to the auxiliary diagnostic or testing equipment, generally belongs to a class of medical devices, do not need to do clinical trials, so the overall cycle is not a half a star difference.
Technical barriers are different
A brand new anticancer drug on the market can be said to be the world's attention. Pharmaceutical companies also use strong patents and technological barriers to virtually seal off any gaps related to it from being exploited by others. Even if some have bypassed patents, it is mostly a copycat based on someone else's. And very few generic drugs exceed the efficacy of the original drug. In this way, although patients have more drugs to choose from, there is no actual progress.
Unlike medical devices, the core technology involves various fields such as physics, chemistry, math, biology, medicine, and even machinery and engineering, and technological innovations in any of these fields may promote a certain type of medical device to a higher level. For example, nanotechnology, 3D printing technology and so on.
Price issues
New drug development can be a nine-way street. New drug developers, spend a lot of human and financial resources, bear a lot of investment in the risk of failure, only to have a successful launch of a new drug, which is expensive can be imagined. Medical devices, on the other hand, are usually developed based on new technologies that have already been developed and have a high success rate. Since it is only used for examination and can be reused, the charges are regulated by the state, and there is a great deal of competition in the market, so the examiner does not bear the high price.
Dr. No Drugs Profile
Dr. No Drugs, Associate Chief Pharmacist, Senior Nutritionist, has 11 years of experience in medication guidance, nutritional counseling and health management. Dr. No Medicine advocates healthy living, no sickness, no medicine!