Back to School 2006: Value for money

Thirteen years ago BioCentury sketched a picture called "The Clear Route to ROI" to depict the gap between the perceptions of value creation held by biotechnology companies and those of investors. Today a more mature industry has a new gap to bridge: communicating value of its products to end users, specifically payers and the public.

These two very different audiences use two very different sets of metrics to inform their judgments about the value of new medicines. In the case of payers, the methods they use to determine value are not dissimilar to those used by investors or businesses, providing at least a common language in which to engage the debate, even if they disagree on the conclusions...