Developing a paradigm of drug innovation: an evaluation algorithm.

Assessment of drug innovation is a burning issue because it involves so many different perspectives, mainly those of patients, decision- and policy-makers, regulatory authorities and pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, the innovative value of a new medicine is usually an intrinsic property of the compound, but it also depends on the specific context in which the medicine is introduced and the availability of other medicines for treating the same clinical condition. Thus, a model designed to assess drug innovation should be able to capture the intrinsic properties of a compound (which usually emerge during R&D) and/or modification of its innovative value with time. Here we describe the innovation assessment algorithm (IAA), a simulation model for assessing drug innovation. IAA provides a score of drug innovation by assessing information generated during both the pre-marketing and the post-marketing authorization phase.