• Utilising Open-Source tools to carve out a market niche: The open-source tools listed above have the potential to make a tidy profit to the business that facilitates their creation.
• Facilitating efficiency of distribution of Human Insulin and Analogues: [1]
• The global pharmaceutical distribution market is a maze of intermediaries, each adding a small profit margin to the final price. Remodelling this will require public and private entities operating at all stages of the supply chain.
• E.g. A click-and-mortar business that matches a diabetic’s insulin requirements to a specific wholesaler - cutting out all intermediaries and claiming a portion of the profit margin.

The sheer scale of the insulin market (600m+ potential patients) allows economies of scale to play a major role in the competitiveness of individual players. Without enormous investment capital, any new manufacturing facility will be too small to make a significant impact on the insulin market and may be unable to produce at a low enough cost to survive a price war.* As such, new market entrants will most likely be large pharmaceutical corporations looking to share in this industry’s profits.

• Large-scale Manufacturing Facilities
• Expected cost: Minimum of US$100m for a medium-scale facility [2]
• Research and Development of Single-Chain Insulin Analogues:
• xpected cost: Upwards of $US50m for initial approval. Ongoing expense of 20-25% annual operating costs to ensure compliance. [3] Expense here can scale infinitely with risk aversion.

Governments provide a functional alternative to corporate manufacturing, as they can justify investment in research and manufacturing that offers a lower potential profit margin (or even a loss). Analysis of trends and forces within the international ‘Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient’ (API) manufacturing market exemplifies two nations already investing heavily in expanding local insulin manufacturing;

• ndia - The brands ‘Biocon’ and ‘Wockhardt’ already hold a larger portion of the global market share than any other brands outside the ‘Big 3’ and are poised to take greater advantage of economies of scale. If the Indian government were to implement a ‘maximum price’ on insulin, these two could operate locally without fear of competition.
• China - Companies with close ties to the national government such as “Tonghua Dongbao Pharmaceutical” and “Zhuhai United Laboratories” are building enormous manufacturing facilities which could majorly restructure the current market layout.

1. Tsai, A. (2016). The Rising Cost of Insulin. [online] Diabetes Forecast. Available at: http://www.diabetesforecast.org/2016/mar-apr/rising-costs-insulin.html?referrer=https://www.google.com.au/ [Accessed 25 Oct. 2017].
2. Basu, P., Joglekar, G. and Rai, S. (2008). Analysis of Manufacturing Costs in Pharmaceutical Companies. [online] Available at: http://moodle.univ-lille2.fr/pluginfile.php/28162/mod_resource/content/0/Analysis%20of%20Manufacturing%20Costs%20in%20pharma%202008.pdf [Accessed 25 Oct. 2017].
3. Bruttin, F. and Dean, D. (2017). Managing the Cost of Compliance in PharmaceuticalOperations. [online] Available at: https://www.scribd.com/document/137906487/Managing-the-Cost-of-Compliance-in-Pharmaceutical-Operations [Accessed 25 Oct. 2017].