1. The United States is becoming the global R&D center for pharmaceuticals. This may be explained by prospects for continued growth in the world's largest pharmaceuticals market, government measures to promote development of new drugs, faster approvals of new drug applications as well as effective policies and institutional reforms based on national industry promotion strategies.
2. Large scale reforms of the Medicare system will boost expenditures on pharmaceuticals, as prescription drugs are now covered under the benefit plan.
3. The development of private medical insurance schemes exemplified by the Managed Care system, while limiting drug price increases, will as a whole lead to further increased expenditure on pharmaceuticals by facilitating consumption.
4. With the degree of consolidation low in the pharmaceuticals industry relative to other industry sectors, further M&A moves are likely despite recent large-scale mergers.
5. R&D expenditure will continue to rise due to increasingly complex diseases, longer development lead times, and higher development risks.
6. With blockbuster drugs accounting for a high 70% of total revenues at pharmaceutical firms, R&D efforts will continue to be targeted at new blockbusters.
7. With reliance on blockbusters alone risky, pharmaceutical firms will also pursue strategic alliances, licensing agreement, and joint R&D.
8. The NIH plays a central role in assuring close and effective cooperation as well as information sharing between political, administrative, and industry spheres.
9. The FDA and other regulating agencies are quick to formulate and implement various measures including the Prescription Drug User Fee Act and Hatch-Waxman Act in an effort to assist pharmaceutical firms to develop new drugs.
10. No system is perfect. Voluntary withdrawal of Vioxx from the market and ensuing litigations have resulted from criticism and oversight of the US pharmaceutical industry. Public criticism against placing corporate profits before public safety also questions the principles of a US medical care system based primarily on market forces. Going forward, demand will be for pharmaceutical companies to balance corporate profit and public welfare.

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When Japanese hospitals try to adopt a benchmarking method, we will find three unique aspects related to hospital management. Firstly, it has not been confirmed what critical factors are for managing hospitals. Secondly, there is difficulty when grouping various hospitals on equal footing. Thirdly, we cannot designate priority among various performance indicators in hospital administration.
This study tries to solve these problems related to benchmarking in hospital management and develop a benchmarking method for Japanese hospitals using a multivariate statistical technique.
First of all, we selected five important performance indicators from 15 various indicators using principal component analysis. Then, we classified sample hospitals in five groups using cluster analysis by two exogenous factors among five factors. Thirdly, we made the assumption that the objective function would be to break even on the balance sheet of hospitals. Under this assumption we did logistic regression analysis to find important performance indicators for breaking even.
According to these analyses, we recognize that the performance indicators, which effect the balance statistically, would differ among hospital groups on equal footing.

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This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure technical efficiency of the Secondary Medical Service Region in Japan. A regression model is also employed to examine what causes a region to provide inefficient medical service. Possible factors influencing the efficiency are population and space size, the number of medical staffs and beds, among others. Results highlight the significant effects of regional population and the space size on the technical efficiency.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between M&A and R&D investment in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry.
Theory suggests M&A may be positively correlated with R&D investment if M&A is motivated by synergistic gains, for example, economies of scale and scope. On the other hand, a negative correlation may occur if firms are choosing risk diversification strategies.
Using panel data of 63 firms, 157 samples from 2000-03 and probability models, such as a probit model, a logit model, and a count data model, I conducted an empirical analysis.
The major quantitative results are summarized as follows.
First, there is a negative correlation (substitutability) between M&A and R&D investment. This suggests firms are specializing in either an internal growth strategy or an external growth strategy.
Second, there is a positive correlation between probability of M&A and the firm size.

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Many public health policies interfere with human rights, limiting the exercise of personal rights. Examples are limitation of individual privacy by screening programs and census studies, that of free expression by the regulation on commercial speech, limitation of personal autonomy and freedom by quarantine, isolation and forced treatments. However, there have not been thus far established a set of standard procedures to judge if those human rights limitations can be accepted and justifiable for the sake of public health. For such decisions, the legitimacy, rationality, economic costs and efficiency, the degree of rights limitation, and the fairness of policies should be thoroughly assessed, along with their interactions with other policies. In a democratic society, due process is also quite important to secure the balance between public health and individual rights.

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