The Scandinavian healthcare system and pharmaceutical market is well regulated, with the state bearing responsibility for a large proportion of an individual’s pharmaceutical expenses. Solidarity and equality are the ideological basis of these welfare states, and a significant public commitment exists towards ensuring access to high quality health care for all citizens. Sweden and Denmark have been the two biggest pharma and biotech markets in Scandinavia, while regional players such as Novo Nordisk have laid the foundations for this industry in the region.

‘The Scandinavian Pharmaceutical Market Outlook to 2013’ is a report published by Business Insights that explores the healthcare systems and policy environments of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. This report examines the region’s market potential by assessing historic epidemiological data, sales trends, competitive intelligence and clinical data across each major country. The growth drivers of the region are identified and forecasts for major prescription drugs and markets are provided for the period 2009-13. The competitive landscape of the Scandinavian market is also evaluated, with the region’s five leading companies being assessed based upon their marketed product portfolios and R&D pipelines in order to forecast their future competitive positions.

Key Findings
The Scandinavian pharma market recorded sales of $10.1bn in 2007, a 16% increase over 2006. Sweden had the largest market share (38%), followed by Finland (23%), Denmark (22%), and Norway (17%). These countries possess developed infrastructures, advanced technologies, R&D support and business friendly cultures. Pfizer led the Scandinavian market in 2007 with sales of $696m, a 6.3% increase over 2006.

Pfizer has a significant presence in all four Scandinavian markets and in the leading therapeutic areas of the region. Drugs for the treatment of CNS disorders are the largest product class in Scandinavia, with a market share of 20.7% in 2007. Cancer and cardiovascular diseases are the next largest therapeutic categories in the region.

Well-developed biotech and life sciences clusters across the Scandinavian region enable world-class research and provide pools of well-educated personnel and versatile facilities to support start-up companies.

Parallel trade has become a major concern for the profitability of Scandinavia-based Pharma companies in recent years. Factors driving this include lower prescription drug expenditures sought by payors and parallel traders’ strategies benefit from price differentials for drugs across different countries.

Use this report to...

• Compare the healthcare markets of key Scandinavian countries with this report’s macroeconomic analysis of infrastructure, per capita health expenditure and Pharma sales growth vs. GDP growth across Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway.
• Understand how healthcare policy environments vary across the region with this report’s examination of drug approval processes, pricing regulations and reimbursement policies in each major country.
• Identify which indications have the greatest potential to provide franchise growth with this report’s evaluation of major therapy/sub-therapy areas and leading brands, including forecast sales over the period 2009-2013.
• Measure the performances and prospects of leading companies in the Scandanavian area with this report’s strategic analysis of leading pharma corporations based on sales focus by drug class, currently marketed products and R&D pipeline portfolios.

Explore issues including...
The threat to EU health spending. Pharma activity in the Scandinavian market is focused around cost containment, but in recent years the consumption of generics and parallel imports has slowly increased. A new pricing regime linked to other European countries has also had a moderating effect on price levels in Scandinavian countries over recent years.

Higher licensing deal values. Competition for promising projects (particularly drugs that have established solid proof-of-concept data) has not only boosted the deal values overall, but also increased the quantity and average value of deals in the early stages of product development.

Parallel trade influencing pricing. The prevalence of parallel trade is having a significant impact upon state expenditure on drugs and consumer prices. In Sweden, parallel imports have been included as substitutable products in accordance with the generic substitution policy, giving significant boost to parallel imported products in the country.

Support for generic substitution of patented drugs. A report by the National Trade Estimate of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) made special mention of Finland, due to the country’s Pharma Pricing Board not always waiting for the expiry of the analogous process patent before taking action.

Discover...

• What will be the major growth drivers in the Scandinavian pharma market over 2009-13?
• Which companies were the winners and losers in the Scandinavian pharma market in 2007?
• Which companies will become key players over 2009 -13?
• Which products will be affected by generic competitors over the period 2009-13?
• Which pipeline products will be the growth drivers of the future?
• Which therapy areas and indications have the highest market potential over 2009-13?
• How will the Scandinavian pharma market’s competitive landscape change by 2013?