Pharmaceutical Review

November, 2007

The Impact of Medical Reform Policies on the Trend of China’s Pharmaceutical Industry

According to Analysis and Forecast on Social Situations in China (2007) released by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the difficulty and high cost of getting medical treatment have become one the most acute social problems today. Gao Qiang, Minister of Health revealed in March 2007, “The new medical insurance solution will surely come out this year.”

Medical systems of many countries including UK, US and Germany aroused intensive debate during the discussion on medical reform plan last year. With a population of 1.4 billion, China has quite different situations with developed countries. Therefore, it’s impossible for China to copy existing systems of other countries. Currently, the Chinese government invests much less resources in medical & healthy system than developed countries and even some developing countries like India. From analysis, it is not difficult to find that all problems in China’s current medical system can be directly or indirectly attributed to the insufficient investment of government resources and unbalanced resource distribution. Medical & health system reform will be a long and arduous way to go, and determining and publicizing medical reform plan is just the first step. The real challenge will still be implementing the plan with limited resources.

While the new medical reform plan is coming up, Roland Berger, through deduction, analyzed the influence of policies introduced last year or to be introduced by relevant authorities on the trend of the medical industry, providing a reference for pharmaceutical enterprises to formulate strategy of development under the new environment.

I.Policy and economic driving factors of China’s pharmaceutical industry

II.The trend of hospital system and major players under the influence of policy and economic factors

III.Competition model of foreign pharmaceutical companies in the future