Information Opacity in Biopharmaceutical Innovation Through the Lens of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed myriad and complex challenges for our national health care system spanning preparedness, response, access, costs, infrastructure, coordination, and medical innovation. These challenges implicate federal, state, and local agencies and actors, as well as international collaborative bodies. One constant throughout the pandemic has been the pressing need for safe and effective diagnostics, prophylactic vaccines, and drug treatments to counter the virus.1 Inarguably, significant problems with the multi-faceted system of drug and vaccine innovation and regulation manifested long before the COVID-19 pandemic.2 The pandemic, however, has laid bare the inextricable connections among federal funding, patents, product review and approval mechanisms, and the eventual medical products and resulting costs.