Study goals
The objective of the study is to analyze the situation of the national pharmaceutical industry and its capacity for innovation in relation to other member countries of the BRICS.
Relevance / originality
The article has no similarity with the precursor literature analyzed, being original in the sense of compiling the status of the pharmaceutical industries in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and providing a comparative analysis.
Methodology / approach
For the construction of this study, an exploratory research was used, in which relevant articles were obtained within the existing literature on the topics of pharmaceutical industry and patents for each of the BRICS countries, in order to enable an evolutionary construction.
Main results
The comparative analysis showed that Brazil has a certain gap in fundamental parameters for the existence of a national R&D pharmaceutical industry, having been behind Russia, India and China, even symbolically by not producing a national vaccine.
Theoretical / methodological contributions
It was shown that countries that are able to establish a better connection between the academic and business environment have the best levels of pharmaceutical innovation.
Social / management contributions
The work demonstrated that there is a need for public policies that encourage industrial and academic development, in addition to reducing bureaucracy in the patent and registration system, increasing the speed of generation of intellectual rights.