Taiwan Taiwan runs one of the most cost-effective universal healthcare systems in the world, delivering near-universal coverage to 23 million people at a fraction of what comparable systems cost elsewhere. At the foundation of that achievement sits a network of domestic generic and OTC manufacturers, several of them family-owned businesses now…

Taiwan Despite its modest market size, Taiwan is proving a popular investment destination for pharma and medtech multinationals. While the island’s semiconductor industry garners more headlines and revenues, life sciences is also growing as an investment sector. Taiwan is frequently near the front of the queue within APAC for new product…

Taiwan Access to capital is the difference between life and death for small biotechs and life science start-ups. But in an industry with high levels of failure and decades-long development cycles, finding the right investors – those with sufficiently deep pockets and enough of an appetite for risk – can be…

USA Cell and gene therapies (CGTs) can now cure diseases that were untreatable a decade ago, often with a single dose. Yet most eligible patients – even those in rich countries like the United States – will never receive them. In many cases, the science is already in place. However, high…

Global Across the Global South, hundreds of millions of people live without reliable access to basic healthcare. Too few doctors, too little data, and systems too fragile to scale. However, as Capria Ventures’ Francis Perelman outlines, a new wave of AI-native startups is building for precisely those conditions, deploying tools that…

Germany Germany’s Medical Research Act is almost two years old. Writing in the June/July 2026 edition of DIA Global Forum, Thomas Sudhop, Claudia Riedel and Karl Broich of the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) outline how the Act attempts to revitalise clinical research in Germany, balancing faster procedures…

Global Sally Epstein looks at why the world’s biggest AI companies are all pivoting towards biopharmaceuticals. Epstein, an entrepreneur in residence at Cambridge Innovation Capital, argues that drug discovery – if done right – could be where the AI industry has the biggest societal impact (and can therefore justify companies’ enormous…

Global Whilst G7 countries have long been the traditional homes of pharmaceutical innovation, there is increased global competition, and a real risk that this longstanding leadership will be lost without concerted action. Ahead of the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Evian on 15-17 June 2026, David Reddy, Director General of IFPMA, stresses…

China China has built one of the world’s most advanced digital health ecosystems — large, fast-moving, and integrated across hospitals, internet platforms, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and regulators. AI is now embedded across the entire value chain: drug discovery, clinical trial management, medical imaging, patient triage, and hospital workflows. Insilico Medicine is…

USA The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finds itself in the midst of unprecedented political turmoil. The Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) removed 3,500 of the Agency’s 20,000 employees in 2025, and a relentless succession of leadership upheavals has compounded the disruption. After 17 months of regulatory and…

Europe A 2025 collection of perspectives from over 30 biopharmaceutical industry stakeholders finds that while patient centricity has made real progress — moving from an afterthought to an expectation in the US and Europe — implementation remains patchy and often superficial. As Matthew Reaney, writing in ISPOR’s Value & Outcomes Spotlight…

MEA The Middle East contains one of the world’s strongest concentrations of expertise in the rare blood disorder thalassaemia. The story starts with the high prevalence of this disease in the region – thalassaemia affects roughly one in 100,000 people globally but reaches up to ten percent of the population in…