Alarming, Widening Gaps in Worldwide Pharma Business Development

Alarming, Widening Gaps in Worldwide Pharma Business Development 

Heidelberg (Germany) 14 May 2021: Amid efforts towards regionally diversified supply chains and in-country (or in-EU) manufacture of intermediates and finished forms which call for an accelerated exchange of cooperative agreements, RauCon GmbH & Co. KG  is receiving alarming signals from its long-time pharmaceutical clients concerning a widening inter-country gap in pharma business development activities. The Heidelberg, Germany, based pharma business development service provider since more than 26 years ascribes this to predominantly two reasons: vaccination progress and the pace of digitalisation.

Different countries began their vaccination campaigns at different times with more than 70 days between the first and the last, resulting in countries being at different stages of their vaccination campaigns currently. Varying vaccine rollout strategies and vaccination speeds add to a widening gap in vaccination progress among the countries. 

This is one of the reasons why North America, Western Europe, and Israel are now relaxing travel and meeting restrictions while others cannot, apart from a very few small or less populated countries in Asia and South America. Face-to-face pharma business development meetings can take place in the former but not in the latter. They can be attended by executives of the former but not of the latter. Video business development meetings encounter the same situation because usually the countries with a good vaccination progress are the same that excel at the speed of digitalisation.

Co-founder and pharma business development veteran Dr. Norbert Rau expects that „for some time, probably for the next several months, this could mean a competitive business development advantage for pharma companies located in countries with fast vaccination campaigns and good digitalisation progress and a disadvantage for the others. These are expected to fall back in business development efforts unless they invest massively in digital communication technology.“

The first live pharma business development partnering event, euroPLX 76 Noordwijk (www.raucon.com) will be held on-site on 14 and 15 June 2021 in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Its new features will include alternating digital and on-site meetings periods designed to accelerate the exchange of business opportunities.