The pharmaceutical industry is arguably one of the world’s oldest industries. It's origins can be traced as far back as Kemet and their developments in surgical knowledge, to the middle ages and a range of hit-and-miss pharmacological treatments, to most recently the early 19th century, when companies like Pfizer and Merck began to emerge.
My dad used to tell me that “people are going to eat, get sick and eventually die,” and as morbid as that sounds, he was right. The role of the pharmaceutical industry is to discover, develop and produce medications that will either prevent a disease from occurring, alleviate the symptoms, allowing for better disease management or cure the disease altogether.
The future of the industry is in individualized care. The industry is moving from developing medications for disease states to using DNA and other biological components to tailor medications for individual patient types.
