Exploring the future of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry : a supply chain perspective

Abstract

This thesis uses an innovative approach to explore the much-analyzed U.S. Healthcare system. To be sure, we are fully aware of the challenges involved in making robust system level policy recommendations and how local inefficiencies and hidden uncertainties undermine attempts proposing sweeping changes. Hence, we propose to investigate the Healthcare system using a supply chain perspective, which is inherently cross-functional and typically involves numerous different stakeholders. This holistic view will force us to think beyond artificial functional boundaries that promote local inefficiencies in the Healthcare system. Since the future is increasingly uncertain, we chose to use the scenario planning technique to guide the research process of developing effective system level policies. We will also leverage our insights to recommend new research directions to investigate the redefined system boundaries suggested by our scenarios. Since a Fortune 50 pharmaceutical company was used as a case study, the research focused primarily on a subset of the U.S. Healthcare system namely the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. The research also benefited from a series of workshops with supply chain executives from a variety of industries.

(cont.) These workshops helped us refine and validate the scenario planning methodology as a tool to think and plan for the long-term future in uncertain times. Furthermore, the analysis of U.S. Healthcare inefficiencies through a supply chain perspective resulted in some promising policy recommendations as well as exciting future research ideas.