Industry Insight: The measure of success

“Getting to results faster and with higher data quality are challenges for major techniques, especially separation techniques such as LC and LC/MS.” explains Jaquemar. “Equally, solutions for secure information management are rapidly gaining in importance.”

Markus Jaquemar

Room for improvement

Jaquemar firmly believes that productivity in the pharma value chain continues to be the prominent driving factor in moving the industry forward: “Pharma continues to suffer from the innovation gap (growing R&D expenses with stagnant or reduced output of New Molecular Entities), thus resulting the focus on productivity in all areas of the Pharma Value chain. Other drivers include ongoing outsourcing; fail early-fail cheap; operational excellence, plus focus on core competencies.”

Analysts will often compare the US with Europe in terms of R&D spend, but how does a supplier view tomorrow’s market? “We continue to see moderate R&D investment in traditional Pharma applications and continued higher investment around large molecule applications, mainly Biologics. I also believe that the major industry growth, over the next few years, will be in Biopharmaceuticals and Clinical Trials.”

Aiming to please

Through Agilents’ sales channel, Jaquemar explains how to be involved with the end user to ensure that your potential products meet their needs. “We maintain excellent and ongoing relationships with our customers,” begins Jaquemar. “We conduct user meetings, customer focus groups, plus we recently launched our ‘Pharma meets Agilent’ program in which we explore common op. We also ensure that we address the entire workflow of our customers which includes sample processing, analytical measurement, data analysis, consumables, technical assistance and service maintenance and support.”

Like many suppliers, Agilent have taken the initiative to collaborate with academic institutions: “We at Agilent run a number of active collaborations with academic institutions including grants to universities. We have also implemented an aggressive Campus hire program.”

The way forward

While the pharma industry continues to develop, Jaquemar explains what he sees as the major areas of growth for Agilent. “To accelerate our traditional core businesses, Agilent has major initiatives around Life Science tools and informatics,” he says. And Jaquemar is keen to point out that Pharma is seeking innovative approaches, “mainly in the areas of predictive toxicology, in-silico tools and human microdosage”.

It seems that innovation spurs innovation, so as long as Pharma searches for bigger, better and faster results, there remains plenty of opportunities for technology suppliers.