end are physicians/businessmen, who are the
money-raising voice of the venture. In either of
these settings, pharmaceutical medicine is needed
and the specialist will apply all of the training
components that, as already indicated, compose
this new discipline.
The biotechnology industry is carrying forward
some of the best and brightest projects of the
world’s leading academic institutions. It is moving
pure research concepts through applied research
into development and finally to the production of
remarkable new therapeutic products. This indus-
try has already created two or three new companies
of substance, with sales of over $1 billion per year
and a capitalization measured in billions. More
than these obvious and huge successes, the industry
has spawned literally thousands of venture capital
efforts and new companies developing drugs,
devices, diagnostics and all manner of medical
technologies. Amazingly, this is an industry
which has come into being in the last decade or
two. Like the PC and software industry, it is revo-
lutionizing society’s approach to new product
development and even to what a new therapeutic
agent actually is. Already, companies are finding
that the major transition points in the therapeutic
product development process, from molecular to
biochemical system, to cellular system, to organ
model, to intact organism, to mammalian model, to
humans, are all real watersheds. Pharmaceutical
medicine provides the required understanding of
each of these processes and particularly of the
transition points. In a very real sense, the success
of these emerging companies will be determined
by the quality of their pharmaceutical medicine
efforts.
The new discipline of pharmaceutical medicine
is a speciality which has only very recently become
recognized in its own right as a speciality within
medicine. Indeed, the Faculty of Pharmaceutical
Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Physicians was
only founded in 1989 in the United Kingdom and
the Academy in the United States even more
recently in 1993. Like many new ventures, this
new medical speciality is not seen by all today as
one of the premiere medical roles. However, there
is a growing involvement of academics within the
pharmaceutical industry and Nobel prize-winning
work is being done within the industry. Further-
more, there is a growing understanding within
academia that in the past someone else was capi-
talizing on their intellectual endeavours, so we are
seeing more medical and bioscience academics
patenting their discoveries and going into business.
As this progress continues, the two disciplines of
research and business are coming to realize that
neither can do the other’s work. Pharmaceutical
medicine is the natural common pathway and the
integrating speciality which will fill this need and
will deliver the healthcare advances of the future. If
this is so, then pharmaceutical medicine will
become a leadership medical function in the
twenty-first century. The speciality lies at the con-
junction of changing societal needs for healthcare,
the burgeoning biosciences and the understandings
of how to provide improved quality of life and
cost–utility for patients today. The expertise it
contains and provides includes basic sciences,
such as chemistry and mathematics, applied
sciences, such as engineering, economics and busi-
ness, biological sciences, such as pharmacology
and toxicology, and the medical sciences from
paediatrics to geriatrics and from family medicine
to the individual subspecialities. As such, pharma-
ceutical medicine is one of the most challenging,
exciting and rewarding areas of medicine. It is a
career for those who wish to be in the vanguard of
research on multiple fronts.2.1 Education and training in
pharmaceutical medicineDoctors working with the pharmaceutical
industry as pharmaceutical physicians are encour-
aged to undertake training in pharmaceutical
medicine which is the medical discipline or speci-
ality which encompasses their work in medical
departments of the pharmaceutical and related
healthcare companies, in clinical research units
and regulatory bodies. Courses covering general
and specialized aspects of pharmaceutical medi-
cine have been established for many years in a
number of European countries and elsewhere
around the world.2.1 EDUCATION AND TRAINING IN PHARMACEUTICAL MEDICINE 15