What's next? The Swiss Pharmaceutical Industry in the International Innovation Race

The pharmaceutical sector is one of Switzerland's key industries and an important driver for innovation and growth at home and abroad. The success of its companies depends strongly on their ability to steadily nurture their innovation pipeline with high-quality inventions. In this article, we examine the quality of this pipeline and compare the Swiss pharmaceutical industry to its foreign competitors. For past innovations, quality can be assessed by referring to publicly available data on patents. But what about future innovations? Shedding some light on this question, seems especially relevant. To approach this task, we use machine learning algorithms to make predictions about the number of top pharmaceutical patents of different countries, regions, and firms. The good news: The innovation pipeline of the Swiss pharmaceutical sector seems likely to remain at the forefront of the global industry. At the same time, the quality of innovations from emerging competitors like China may increase but not yet reach the level of top pharma locations such as the USA or Switzerland.