Recently, foreign media reported that the latest report from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, titled Outlook 2025: Global Medicine Spending and Usage Trends, indicates that global medicine spending (based on invoice pricing) is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 3% to 6%, reaching approximately $1.6 trillion by 2025, excluding COVID-19 vaccine expenditures.
The report highlights significant differences in medicine usage and spending across global markets. While strong growth in the global pharmaceutical market will continue to drive spending upwards, the expiration of patents for many branded drugs and the end of market exclusivity will result in losses that outweigh spending on newly launched innovative products, leading to a slowdown in growth. Over the next five years, the global medicine market’s annual growth rate is expected to remain below 1%.
In developed countries (middle- and high-income countries), medicine spending is projected to grow at an annual rate of 2% to 5%, similar to the trend of the past five years. In the U.S., the compound annual growth rate of medicine spending over the next five years is expected to be between 0% and 3% (based on net prices), lower than the 3% growth rate of the previous five years.
Notably, emerging markets in the pharmaceutical industry are experiencing changes in drug usage driven by healthcare growth. In China, for instance, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number of innovative drugs have been introduced, offering patients more choices. China’s pharmaceutical market is expected to see rapid growth in medicine spending, with original innovative drugs projected to grow the fastest, at a compound annual growth rate of 9.4%.
