Ahead of the Patent Expiry
The Generic Value Half-Life: how quickly the value of early generic entry is disappearing
Across four successive UK generic cliffs, the Drug Tariff lost half its value faster each time. The paper follows prices on two clocks, what pharmacies paid and what the tariff reimbursed, and looks ahead to the eleven medicines approaching their core UK patent or SPC endpoints from October 2026.
- 17 → 2months to 50% tariff erosion, apixaban (2022) to dapagliflozin (2025)
- 96–99.5%observed acquisition-price erosion across the four cases
- £1.42bn2025 NHS value of the next patent-expiry cohort
