Biotech not like other high tech

In teaching, research and talking to industry professionals, I am often tempted to refer to “high technology” industries, “technology startups” and the like. This would tend to emphasize the commonality between IT and biotech.

And then there are days like Friday, when I’m reminded that biotech — and human health more generally — is completely different.

The occasion was an event on pharmaceutical quality, organized by KGI’s student chapter of the Parenteral Drug Association, a professional organization concerned with drug quality and safety issues.

The students invited three industry speakers.

First up was Susan Weber of Baxter introduced us to the principles of Quality by Design, i.e. start from a quality goal and work back through the entire design, development an production process. The ideas are more than 20 years old, but apparently have recently have begun to influence pharmaceutical manufacturing in the US.

The second speaker was Marsha Hardiman, a consultant for Concordia Valsource. After showing a stunning video by the American Society for Quality on the consequences of quality failures, she summarized the regulatory and process failures of the New England Compounding Center that have led to 64 deaths so far. Nothing illustrates the difference between a bad drug and a bad iPhone app.

The final speaker was James Sesic of Amgen, talking about the challenges of maintaining regulatory compliance for drugs sold in more than 100 countries.

This was the real eye-opener. We all know about the need for drug companies to spend years and hundreds of millions of dollars to get the first NDA or BLA approval. Sometimes we talk about getting the second approval — e.g. in Europe or Japan after the US. But I’ve never heard anyone talk about the rest of the world.

How does a company like Amgen handle approval in dozens of countries? The richest countries have their own large-scale regulatory systems (US, Japan, Canada, Europe), the smallest grant approval after certified approval from one of the major regulators, while a range of countries attempt to form their own regulatory judgements without a lot of resources.

On top of that, regulatory approval is required for any major change in the production process. Normally this discourages companies from making major changes, but if there’s a major improvement in the process — or the company needs to comply with new regulations — it will go through the process.

One example is getting approval to shift manufacturing to a new factory. The company will have to apply for approval in dozens of countries and cannot sell drugs in country X from the new factory until regulatory agency X has approved such production.

If a drug has several deliver modalities — concentration, IV vs. injection, etc. — then when multiplied by the disparate languages, marking requirements and other national regulations, a single blockbuster drug could be sold in 100s of SKUs. Double that with separate SKUs from the old and the new factory.

When it takes 4-6 years for all the countries to approve the change, then an Amgen needs to keep track of all those 200? 500? SKUs (for one drug) to know which SKU is legal to sell in one country.

Contrast this to the rollout of the latest iPhone, a product that (unlike software or PCs) must satisfy strict government and operator requirements to be sold in a given country. Apple launched the iPhone 5c in 10 countries in September, added 60 countries between October 25-November 1, and expects to have more than 100 countries by the end of the year (i.e. in less than 4 months).

The process of global drug regulation seems pretty inefficient, and we pay for this inefficiency through higher costs (or lack of access by smaller countries to non-blockbuster drugs). It would be nice if we could develop a drug regulatory system where the first review is highly rigorous but the remaining process is streamlined so that drug companies spend their money on development (and safety), not SAP and paperwork.

Administration: 93 million will lose existing health insurance

From Forbes, October 31:

Obama Officials In 2010: 93 Million Americans Will Be Unable To Keep Their Health Plans Under Obamacare
[by] Avik Roy
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It turns out that in an obscure report buried in a June 2010 edition of the Federal Register, administration officials predicted massive disruption of the private insurance market.
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Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains what’s called a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection.

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register.
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The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. …

Another 25 million people, according to the CBO, have “non group and other” forms of insurance; that is to say, they participate in the market for individually-purchased insurance. In this market, the administration projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individually-purchased plans would lose their Obamacare-sanctioned “grandfather status” and become illegal, solely due to the fact that there is a high turnover of participants and insurance arrangements in this market. (Plans purchased after March 23, 2010 do not benefit from the “grandfather” clause.) The real turnover rate would be higher, because plans can lose their grandfather status for a number of other reasons.
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As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.