Pharmaceutical Medicine
Pharmaceutical medicine is a medical scientific specialty concerned with the discovery, development, evaluation, registration, monitoring and medical aspects of marketing of medicines for the benefit of patients and the public health.
Careers in pharmaceutical medicine encompass three main groups of physicians: those working in the pharmaceutical industry, those with appointments within medicines regulatory bodies, such as the MHRA, and those working in independent research organisations dedicated to the development of new medicines.
A pharmaceutical physician may be responsible, with his or her team, for all the clinical development for one or more compounds. The development programme must evaluate effectively the risk/benefit ratio for a product, which can be a major challenge in a discipline which is by definition always working on the frontiers of science. It is essential that good communication be maintained across the world so that effective and efficient drug development can be conducted and safety surveillance can be maintained within companies and regulatory authorities.
