Bloomberg published a story yesterday in which Roche says it expects government austerity strategies to benefit Roche's diagnostics unit in the next three to five years, thanks to broader use of tests to see which patients should receive expensive treatments.
Roche Diagnostics' COO, Daniel O’Day, told Bloomberg that he expects the number of tests to help single out the patients who will benefit most from Roche’s therapeutics will double within two to three years.
“No country is going to be able to afford to increase the percentage of GDP spent on health care,” O’Day told the online publication. “What they’re all looking for is how we can take this certain pie we have for healthcare and better leverage it for society.”
Products such as a test to detect HPV, a cause of cervical cancer, and a gene test approved this month alongside Roche’s new melanoma drug Zelboraf will be “solutions for how the countries divide the pies more efficiently,” O’Day continued. Roche expects growth at the diagnostics unit to outpace the drugmaker’s larger pharmaceuticals unit as sales decline for its best-selling cancer drug Avastin, Bloomberg reports.
The Bloomberg piece is here.