Intended for healthcare professionals

Career Focus

Pharmaceutical medicine

BMJ 1996; 313 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7056.2 (Published 31 August 1996) Cite this as: BMJ 1996;313:S2-7056

In the first of a series of occasional articles devoted to careers in specialties not represented on the undergraduate syllabus, Darrell L Higson discusses working for the drug industry.

Pharmaceutical medicine is the discipline concerned with the medical aspects of research, development, evaluation, registration, monitoring, and marketing of medicines in the interests of patients. It is one of the fastest growing medical specialties in Britain: in 1974 there were some 260 doctors in the specialty; by 1989 numbers had doubled to 500, and today more than 700 doctors are employed within the British pharmaceutical industry and the contract research industry that serves it.

The expansion has been driven by the increased regulatory activity that followed the thalidomide tragedy in the ‘sixties. Both the Medicines Act of 1968 and the formation of the Committee on Safety of Medicines increased the need for physicians within the pharmaceutical industry and the regulatory authorities.

The British Association of Pharmaceutical Physicians (BrAPP) plays a major part in raising awareness of the specialty, introducing the Diploma in Pharmaceutical Medicine in 1975, and establishing the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine as part of the three Royal Colleges of Physicians in Britain, in 1989.

Aims of industry

The pharmaceutical industry strives to develop and manufacture high quality new medicines with excellent efficacy and safety profiles. To continue to do this companies need to be profitable within a commercial environment, while recognising the special nature of medicines as distinct from general commodities, which is embodied in the ethical and legal codes of practice by which the industry operates.

Companies must seek approval from national regulatory authorities, such as the Medicines Control Agency in Britain before a medicine in development can be evaluated in patients or made available on the market.

Only one out of 5000 or so compounds discovered and investigated is likely to reach the prescription market. The development process from patent filing to product launch takes an average of 12 years at a total cost of some …

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