How insurers are helping the life science sector
Personalised medicines, weight loss injections, plus people bypassing doctors to access the latest miracle drug online are examined in the latest Insurance Post Podcast.
Ed Hunter, life sciences broking leader at WTW, and Tim Galloway, QBE Europe’s portfolio manager for life sciences, discuss the impact off-label drug use and accessing medication via online pharmacies are having on the life science insurance market.
On emerging risks facing the sector, Hunter said: “Drug repurposing. When surveying our clients they identify that as possibly the largest area of growth from their perspective.
"The huge advantage there is analysing and mining huge amounts of data for the sake of finding new solutions from existing clinical trials that have already been undertaken and essentially applying it to new therapies, which can be hugely advantageous.
“From a product liability perspective, this is data that has been taken from phase two/phase three trials where frankly, unfortunately, the intent for what it was first envisaged hasn’t for whatever reason been as successful as first hoped.
”You aren’t wasting all the enterprise that has gone in. All the safety checks of a phase one check have been undertaken so there can be a degree of assurance, that while the drugs are being used for different purposes, are safe for human consumption.“
Off-label abuse is a massive issue that pharmaceutical companies have to deal with, Galloway said.
He said: “Weight loss drugs were specifically designed to treat people with diabetes who had obesity. What it does is bring the weight down, but then, of course, what happens is people abuse them as well.
”Pharmaceutical companies need to be aware of that, maybe a bit tighter on that, and work on ways to stop the trade outside and off-label abuse."
The pair also discusses how drug manufacturing is changing post-COVID, the impact of stockpiling on underinsurance, and how artificial intelligence is impacting underwriting these risks.
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