Pharma ranked a highest contributor to society, despite public perception

The pharmaceutical industry has been ranked as one of the highest contributors to UK society, but public perception still falls far below other sectors, claims a new study by Portland. The dissonance means that the industry ranks among the least successful sectors in demonstrating its value to society, scoring consistently low on perceptions for most measures in Portland’s total value index. The total value index measures the value that organisations create for all stakeholders, looking at nine sectors and using a wide range of measures including profits and dividends, R&D levels, employee diversity and satisfaction to records on corporate tax and the environment, to assess and rank the total value performance of sectors. The data found that the pharmaceutical industry adds much more value than most sectors, particularly in local investment, strong dividend performance, and the presence of female CEOs, despite having the largest perception gap of any sector for their role as a producer, demonstrating the “greater need for individual companies to explain the life-changing nature of the medicines that they create.”