On Friday, April 26, 2019, Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Economics Richard Frank, PhD, presented at the Harvard Medical School “Next Big Things: Celebrating Innovation and Collaboration at Harvard Medical School” seminar, part of the HMS Talks@12 series.

This seminar was hosted to recognize the promise and progress of creative and collaborative projects underway at HMS by celebrating the recipients of the Dean’s Innovation and Q-FASTR awards.

Frank, who along with Professor Thomas McGuire was a 2019 recipient of a Dean’s Innovation award, presented on “Understanding the idiosyncratic performance of the generic pharmaceutical market”. He highlighted the changes in savings and drug production in the United States from 2007-2016. His presentation showed that three major buying groups now control 90% of the generic pharmaceutical market, and that much drug production has been outsourced overseas. These changes have occurred in response to pressures to reduce prices and has increased risks of supply interruptions in the market for generic drugs, which led Frank to ask: “Are there segments of the market where prices are driven too low, and some not low enough?”

Sloan Devlin, PhD, assistant professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology, and Peter Sorger, PhD, Otto Krayer Professor of Systems Pharmacology, also spoke at the seminar. The talks were followed by a poster showcase, a presentation by Harvard Medical School Dean, George Q. Daley, MD, PHD, and lightning talks by HMS faculty.

The Next Big Things Talks@12 can be viewed here.