As Long as It's Bad for Disease

Paul Stoffels, company group chairman for Global R&D Pharmaceuticals at Johnson & Johnson, has a guest blog at CNBC about how "recent advances in science, genomics technologies, biomarkers, and drug development" have coalesced to offer the potential for personalized medicine. Using HIV drug development as an example, Stoffels makes the case that relying on diagnostic expertise throughout the process led not only to more targeted treatment, but also helped the pharma make better drugs. "Their combination approach meant that development was faster, approval was faster, and reimbursement happened more quickly," he writes. "That's a model that's good for pharmaceutical companies, good for regulators, good for payers and good for patients."