Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1335 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here.
Preamble
For decades, the pharmaceutical industry’s primary business model has revolved around discovering, developing, manufacturing, and marketing medicines to treat diseases.
This model has delivered extraordinary benefits to humanity. Antibiotics, vaccines, cardiovascular medicines, diabetes treatments, and countless other pharmaceutical innovations have improved life expectancy and saved millions of lives.
But healthcare is changing.
The global conversation is gradually moving from treating illness towards preventing disease, maintaining health, and extending the number of years people can live productively. A September 2026 report by the McKinsey Health Institute, The Future of Healthy Living: A $16.4 Trillion Opportunity, makes a compelling economic case for this transition. It estimates that eliminating modifiable health risks could generate $16.4 trillion in additional annual global GDP by 2050 and add 12 healthy years to life expectancy at birth.
For Pakistan’s pharmaceutical industry, this represents more than a public health development. It is an opportunity to reconsider its future business model. The question is no longer simply how many medicines pharmaceutical companies can sell. It is how much they can contribute to keeping people healthy.
Pakistan’s healthcare challenge
Pakistan faces a complex healthcare environment. Non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and chronic respiratory conditions, are placing increasing pressure on healthcare services and household finances.
- Other challenges include:
- Inadequate awareness of preventive healthcare.
- Late diagnosis of chronic diseases.
- Limited access to routine screening.
- Poor nutrition and physical inactivity.
- Tobacco consumption and environmental pollution.
- Unequal access to quality healthcare, particularly in underserved communities.
These problems create significant demand for pharmaceutical products. But they also create an opportunity for the industry to contribute to prevention and early intervention.
Consider diabetes. Pharmaceutical companies have traditionally participated in this market through insulin, oral antidiabetic medicines, and other treatments. But the broader diabetes-care opportunity includes early risk identification, blood glucose monitoring, patient education, nutrition counselling, adherence support, and long-term disease management. Similarly, cardiovascular health involves more than supplying antihypertensive and cholesterol-lowering medicines. It also requires awareness, screening, lifestyle modification, early diagnosis, and consistent treatment.
The industry can become an active partner in these broader healthcare programmes.
The shift from treatment to prevention: A new business opportunity
McKinsey identifies behavioural, metabolic, and environmental risks as important contributors to the global disease burden.
For pharmaceutical companies, metabolic health deserves particular attention. Obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and abnormal cholesterol levels frequently coexist, creating substantial long-term health risks. The growing interest in GLP-1 medicines has brought obesity and metabolic health into the mainstream healthcare conversation. These medicines have created new possibilities for managing obesity and related conditions. However, pharmacological treatment is only one part of the solution. The long-term opportunity lies in integrating medicines with appropriate medical supervision, nutrition, physical activity, patient education, and continuing care.
For Pakistan, this could become an important area of healthcare innovation. Pharmaceutical companies could develop partnerships with healthcare professionals, hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, and nutrition experts to support comprehensive metabolic health programmes. The objective should be better patient outcomes, not merely increased medicine consumption.
Five emerging opportunities for Pakistan’s pharmaceutical companies
- Preventive healthcare and early diagnosis: Pharmaceutical companies can support initiatives that encourage early identification of hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular risks, and other chronic conditions. Working with hospitals, laboratories, medical associations, and community organisations, companies can help improve access to screening and appropriate medical referrals.
- Chronic disease management: Pakistan needs stronger systems to support patients living with long-term conditions. Companies can develop patient-support programmes that include medication adherence education, disease awareness and counselling, follow-up reminders, patient education materials, support for appropriate monitoring, and digital tools that facilitate communication with healthcare professionals. These initiatives can improve treatment continuity and help patients understand how to manage their conditions.
- Digital healthcare and patient engagement: Digital technologies offer opportunities to extend healthcare beyond hospitals and clinics. Mobile applications, telehealth, digital reminders, and remote monitoring can help patients remain connected with healthcare professionals. Pakistan’s high mobile-phone penetration creates opportunities for digitally enabled health programmes, although affordability, digital literacy, privacy, and access disparities must be considered. Pharmaceutical companies should explore partnerships with technology providers rather than attempting to develop every capability independently.
- Nutrition, wellness, and healthy ageing: An ageing population and increasing awareness of healthy living will create demand for products and services supporting bone health, nutritional needs, mobility, and healthy ageing. Companies can explore evidence-based opportunities in nutritional products, appropriate supplementation, and services supporting patients with age-related health needs. However, these markets must be developed responsibly. Scientific evidence and clear differentiation between medicines, medical nutrition, and general wellness products are essential.
- Research and innovation: Pakistan’s pharmaceutical industry has considerable scope to strengthen research capabilities. Local companies can collaborate with universities, hospitals, and international research organisations to develop solutions addressing diseases prevalent in Pakistan. Research should increasingly consider prevention, diagnostics, patient outcomes, and long-term disease management alongside traditional drug development.
What should pharmaceutical leaders in Pakistan do?
The transition towards healthy living will not happen automatically. It requires deliberate strategic choices.
I would suggest six priorities for pharmaceutical CEOs and senior management teams.
- Revisit corporate strategy. Assess whether the company’s portfolio and capabilities are aligned with emerging healthcare needs, particularly chronic disease prevention, metabolic health, and healthy ageing.
- Build new capabilities. Develop expertise in patient engagement, digital healthcare, real-world evidence, health economics, and disease-management programmes.
- Strengthen partnerships. Collaborate with hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, medical associations, universities, technology companies, and public health organisations.
- Invest in evidence-based patient programmes. Move beyond promotional activities towards initiatives that genuinely improve patient knowledge, treatment adherence, and access to appropriate care.
- Develop people for the changing healthcare environment. Traditional pharmaceutical marketing and sales capabilities will need to be complemented by skills in digital engagement, data analytics, scientific communication, and healthcare partnerships.
- Measure outcomes differently. In addition to sales and market share, evaluate patient engagement, adherence, programme reach, quality of information, and measurable improvements in appropriate health indicators.
A word of caution: Healthy living must not become another marketing slogan
There is a danger that pharmaceutical companies may adopt the language of wellness without making meaningful changes to their business practices.Healthy living should not become a convenient promotional theme for selling more products.
The industry must distinguish between genuine prevention, responsible treatment, and commercial opportunism.
Medicines should be prescribed according to clinical need. Patient data must be protected. Educational initiatives must be scientifically accurate, and partnerships with healthcare professionals must maintain professional independence.
Sum Up
The McKinsey Health Institute’s $16.4 trillion projection offers an important perspective on the future of healthcare. It suggests that the greatest economic and social benefits may come not only from treating disease but also from reducing the risks that cause disease in the first place.
For Pakistan’s pharmaceutical industry, this creates an opportunity to broaden its role. The industry has developed capabilities in manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and medical engagement. These capabilities can provide a foundation for participating in preventive healthcare, chronic disease management, digital health, and healthy ageing.
Concluded.
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