Many argue that the current paradigm for drug discovery and development requires disruptive innovation to break out of a crisis in research and development (R&D) productivity. Evidence suggests that industries are almost always disrupted from the outside by new technologies they were slow to embrace, new business models they wrongly dismissed, or policy changes they thought they could keep at bay. The pharmaceutical industry offers many opportunities for disruption in each of these areas.

The goal of the Disruptive Innovation and Transformation of the Drug Discovery and Development Enterprise action collaborative was to identify and highlight potentially breakthrough ideas and visionary approaches to the “drug development and translational science enterprise of the future.” The effort addressed new technologies (e.g., biosensors, apps and telemetry, synthetic biology, new delivery technologies); new business models (e.g., crowdsourcing platforms, drug repurposing, virtual companies, clinical trials); and policy issues (e.g., pricing/reimbursement, patent law, data transparency).

Two collaborative participants authored a Perspective, Disruptive Innovation and Transformation of the Drug Discovery and Development Enterprise, released by the National Academy of Medicine on July 20, 2016. The authors describe the process by which collaborative participants engaged thought leaders and key stakeholders within the biomedical research ecosystem, soliciting diverse viewpoints to gain insight into their unique perspectives on the state of the pharmaceutical and biomedical research industries, what could or should change, how those changes might occur, and, generally, what the future might hold.

The collaborative, which sunset as of 2016, was an ad hoc activity associated with the Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation (the Forum) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). The work of the collaborative does not necessarily represent the views of any one organization, the Forum, or the National Academies and was not subjected to the review procedures of, nor was it a report or product of, the National Academies.