New Brunswick, NJ - According to Don Seiffert of the Boston Business Journal, "At a gathering of executives in Boston today, Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky said that the best way for the pharmaceutical industry to navigate the political and other challenges ahead is to keep on innovating new products. The 53-year-old head of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) — easily one of the most-recognized companies in the world — was the keynote speaker at the Boston College Chief Executives Club luncheon at the Boston Harbor Hotel, where he hammered home the idea of innovation repeatedly to a crowd of several hundred."
He was introduced by Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: VRTX) CEO Jeffrey Leiden, who lauded the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company for bucking the trend toward specialization, and remaining involved in developing not only drugs, but medical devices and consumer healthcare products.
In response to a question about the presidential election season and the criticism the pharmaceutical industry is taking on drug pricing, Gorsky said, “I think there’s a lot of things we face, and I think that one of the most important things we can do is to continue to focus on innovation.” “I think the thing that we do best as an industry is to take science, and translate that into clinical outcomes ... that result in (patients) being better. When you lose focus on that, that’s when we have a challenge,” he said. Gorsky alluded to an idea being floated increasingly now in the industry, of charging patients based on actual clinical outcomes rather the the work or research that goes into new drugs and devices.
But he said that as society wrestles with issues of cost, “even if we decide that we want to fix healthcare costs at a certain level right now... if we don’t find a cure or a therapeutic improvement for Alzheimer’s - even if everything else is a constant - we are going to have a problem.” He also acknowledged that despite the need for it, innovation is difficult.
“I realize innovation, it’s easy for us as healthcare executives to say that,” he said. “It’s (also) going to take, I believe, more coordination of care.”
In response to a question about the presidential election season and the criticism the pharmaceutical industry is taking on drug pricing, Gorsky said, “I think there’s a lot of things we face, and I think that one of the most important things we can do is to continue to focus on innovation.” “I think the thing that we do best as an industry is to take science, and translate that into clinical outcomes ... that result in (patients) being better. When you lose focus on that, that’s when we have a challenge,” he said. Gorsky alluded to an idea being floated increasingly now in the industry, of charging patients based on actual clinical outcomes rather the the work or research that goes into new drugs and devices.
But he said that as society wrestles with issues of cost, “even if we decide that we want to fix healthcare costs at a certain level right now... if we don’t find a cure or a therapeutic improvement for Alzheimer’s - even if everything else is a constant - we are going to have a problem.” He also acknowledged that despite the need for it, innovation is difficult.
“I realize innovation, it’s easy for us as healthcare executives to say that,” he said. “It’s (also) going to take, I believe, more coordination of care.”
