The success or failure of health advancement stands and falls on the capacity of the pharmaceutical industry to continually bring forward new drugs. It always has, it probably always will. From the herbalists of ancient times to the scientists working on cutting edge 21st Century genome therapies, the success of healthcare has relied on new treatments that are better than the previous version. However, with the promise of potentially lucrative breakthroughs comes challenge and that means overcoming barriers, including the realisation that drugs must be better targeted at specific patients rather than general diseases, improving the sharing of information and beating drug-resistant health conditions.
