Even though India has become one of the leading international players in generic medicines, the country will further face a challenge in generics as big players are competing in generics from all over the world, said Dr Raja D Smarta, honorary secretary, Health, Foods and Dietary Supplements Association of India (HADSA).

While inaugurating the pharma marketing conference on “Marketing Innovation—the fast and promising ways”, organised by Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association (IDMA) in Chennai, he said India should improve access to low cost medicines for the common man all over the world.

Commenting that emerging markets/economies are looking for cost effective drugs, he said pricing will be a major criterion which will lead to increase in use of generics. The growth of generics will be more than the average growth rate of the industry. Patients may be challenged by those companies who have strengths in R&D and new product development. He warned that more and more of classic blockbuster brands for chronic conditions would be falling off patent in a few years.

“Multinationals would also have differential pricing for their products and markets would be really price sensitive, which would give a challenge to all those who are playing in this market. Obviously, even the generics industry will have to differentiate and keep up their market share right from evolving themselves to develop corporate branding,” he said.

He further said the pharma industry is playing a role to educate the specific category of patients such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer etc. These initiatives are from those companies who have the specific products for those indications. So there should be a combined effort from government and the pharma industry to educate the patients about the use of drugs and the services of the pharma industry which is providing quality medicines as well as education on medicine and health care.

As a suggestion he said the social media net work such as Facebook, Twitter, Orkut can be utilized for making awareness to the common man. The medical science is different from educating patients on drugs as medical professionals have to understand right from diagnosis to treatment. “We need to further look at the complications and decide on which drugs to be given. Medical education cannot be equated with education on drugs to patients,” he said.

“As a country, we need lower prices, quality products and availability as our country is very big. So, the government should have a three pronged strategy such as affordability, quality and availability,” he opined.