3 ms·

And the drug isn't patented. I've seen multiple people try to figure out why there is no competition, and some consensus around the fact that while the drug is

And the drug isn't patented. I've seen multiple people try to figure out why there is no competition, and some consensus around the fact that while the drug is not patented, the particular delivery device design (or combination of it and the drug) is patented, and due to issues of needing to train people on multiple different delivery devices, there's no room to break into the market with an equivalent that evades the patent concern.

grandalf 10y ago
While remotely plausible, this sounds farfetched to me, considering that there would be virtually no R&D budget to deal with, and unlike chemical pharmaceuticals it is easy to test the full life cycle of the device in seconds, thousands of times in a row. Epinephrine is in the public domain, and there is no chance that flaws in the delivery device would take years to discover. So in comparison to most of what Big Pharma spends money trying to bring to market, an epi pen is (in comparison) extremely easy. My guess is that even if a patent were successfully filed for a new delivery device, the challenge lies in getting all the sweetheart deals that Mylan was able to get.