The professional prognosticator EvaluatePharma recently released its World Preview 2019, Outlook to 2024 report, which projects prescription drug sales and R&D activity in the U.S. and abroad. (The report is free with site registration.)
You’ll find predictions for the ten best-selling U.S. drug products on page 24. Below is my handy summary chart comparing the 2024 list along with each product’s 2018 sales. For fun, I have also compared the 2018 actual sales with EvaluatePharma’s projections from 2013.
The figures should make us all humble about our ability to project the future. For many products, the EvaluatePharma figures sharply underestimated actual growth rates from 2013 to 2018. The projections to 2024 show that growth will accelerate, which to me suggests an overestimation of future growth. Notably, EvaluatePharma predicts that Humira will retain its sales lead, despite forthcoming biosimilar competition.
These projections, while useful, remind us of another valuable lesson: Good forecasters may not be smarter than everyone else—they merely have their ignorance better organized.
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