In today's fast paced life, which is full of stress and anxiety, and with many leading sedentary life styles, the average person tends to fall sick. Most of us have fallen sick at one point or another. Some fall sick more often and some a little less frequently. The number of diseases which were earlier unknown have started surfacing (for example, H1N1). For known diseases, the virus/bacteria are getting drug resistant. 

Whenever we fall sick, we go to a doctor. The doctor prescribes medicines/drugs and helps us to get better. We go to the pharmacy and after showing the prescription get the medicines. We hardly think about how this medicine is manufactured and what efforts it takes to make one.

Pharmaceuticals and life-sciences companies are the ones who manufacture the medicines. These are commercial organizations and require license from regulatory body before they can sell the medicines. An example of regulatory body is US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Every country, where the pharmaceutical company sells, will have such a body and the pharmaceutical companies needs to adhere to all guidelines and compliance.

Once they get the licenses, these companies can mass manufacture and sell their medicines/drugs in the market. These companies also invest substantially in research and development and keep developing newer drugs or improving existing ones. Apart from humans, the companies may also manufacture medicines for animals and livestocks.

Let's look at different entities in the pharmaceutical industry. The following figure shows the different entities. Let's look at each of them briefly.