Country Outlook: UK

The pharmaceutical market is a critical sector for the UK economy, from 2018 to 2023 its value is forecasted to increase by 19,3%, up to £25bn. The sector represents a great part of the UK exports, being the US and the EU its major importers.

However, the Brexit caused a great deal of uncertainty in the UK pharma sector. Indeed, EU funding, which accounted for €4bn in 2020, will not longer be an option for pharmaceutical enterprises and universities. Moreover, newly needed custom inspections will considerably increase operational cost, as the EU market represents 63% of total UK pharmaceutical trade.

Therefore, the country will probably focus on emerging markets, such as China, India and Brazil, as new export destinations.

New technologies and emerging trends, such as robotics, artificial intelligence and precision medicine, are the upcoming challenges of the UK pharmaceutical industry.

On the one hand, medical insurance companies, drug delivery device developers, pharmaceutical companies and clinics are increasingly developing big data exploitation, artificial intelligence and machine learnings to improve their operations with mining of patient data.

On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies are looking for manufacturing technology automation and digital devices for patient monitoring.

All these new trends combined with Brexit challenges result in UK pharmaceutical companies looking to become more cautious in their spending and outsource manufacturing to  Contract Development & Manufacturing Organisations (CDMOs).