Three years after China launched a national drug bulk-buying program to negotiate lower prices from drug manufacturers, competitive pressure continues to grow on multinational pharmaceutical companies seeking to compete in the vast country’s market. The results of the fourth round of the... Read More
A centralized procurement system launched by the Chinese government will make critically needed coronary stents available directly to Chinese consumers for a fraction of their current price, officials announced in November. The average price of coronary stents for patients in China is... Read More
The long-simmering question of when and how Japan will implement a proposed plan to evaluate and revise drug prices annually, instead of every two years, may finally be resolved next year. That is when a survey being conducted by the Ministry of... Read More
To encourage competitive bidding for medical equipment, the Vietnamese government has launched an online portal that makes available to healthcare facilities the prices and specifications of tens of thousands of medical devices on the market. Established in April by the Ministry of... Read More
Introduction to China’s Drug Market Everyone has been talking about opportunities in China’s drug market the last 5 years. While the size of the drug market in China varies, we estimate it at about $140 billion dollars now and growing about 10%... Read More
In the wake of a 2019 antibiotic shortage which cast light on the country’s dependence on overseas suppliers of the essential drugs, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is proposing a series of measures to ensure stability in its supplies of... Read More
With the COVID-19 pandemic cutting deeply into revenues of healthcare providers across Japan, health authorities are considering postponing cuts to prices for pharmaceuticals offered by the country’s nationalized health insurance system scheduled to go into effect next April. The scheduled price cuts... Read More
China is drafting plans to increase penalties on pharmaceutical companies that manipulate prices, sell counterfeit drugs or otherwise violate pharmaceutical laws. The plans include a credit rating system to incentivize drug firms to lower prices in exchange for access to China’s vast... Read More
To ensure hand sanitizers and medical masks remain available to the public, Thai authorities in April placed price controls on both items considered critical to the welfare of citizens and in high demand. Under a notification published by the Thai Central Committee... Read More
As China pushes ahead with its policy of extracting price cuts from pharmaceutical manufacturers in exchange for access to its vast market, it is increasingly putting pressure on the profit margins of foreign and domestic drug manufacturers. Some drug firms are finding... Read More