日本希望制药业和先进医疗技术成为推动下一阶段经济增长的动力。但要实现这一目标，仅靠增加投资是不够的。
Japan wants pharmaceuticals and advanced medicine to drive its next phase of economic growth. But achieving that goal will require more than increased investment.
日本必须克服那些在战后帮助其制药业发展，但如今却日益限制其竞争力的监管制度和药品定价体系。
Japan must overcome a regulatory and drug-pricing system that helped build its pharmaceutical industry after the war but has increasingly constrained its competitiveness.
7月，首相高市早苗的政府通过了《日本增长战略》，确定了17个战略领域，其中两个与健康和医疗相关：合成生物学和生物技术，以及药品研发和先进医疗技术。
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s administration approved the Japan Growth Strategy in July, designating 17 strategic sectors. Two concern health and medicine: synthetic biology and biotechnology, and drug development and advanced medicine.
政府特别重视后者，希望通过加大公共和私人投资来加强健康和医疗安全。
The administration has made the latter a particular focus of its economic-growth strategy, seeking to strengthen health and medical security through greater public and private investment.
然而，制药业面临一个许多其他战略领域所没有的问题：日本的战后监管制度和药品定价体系主要是为了确保药品的安全性、可负担性和稳定供应，而非将制药业作为战略性经济资产来发展。现在的挑战是如何使这些目标保持一致。
Yet pharmaceuticals face a problem that many other strategic sectors do not. Japan’s postwar regulatory and official drug-pricing systems were designed primarily to ensure the safety, affordability and stable supply of medicines — not to promote the industry as a strategic economic asset. The challenge now is to align those objectives.