Market Access consultancies bubble forming up?

Folks, the whole health economics consultancy industry is changing and growing and I thought I post some food for thought and discussions among the readers. Since about last year there is an unbroken trend in new health economics, pricing & reimbursement, market access, health economics communications etc. consulting companies popping up almost daily - I am sure at this years ISPOR conference in Toronto exhibition space will get crowded... Looks like many wanting to still jump on the train and ride the wave of increasing demand for these services due to ever increasing health economics requirements worldwide - I guess the peack will be reached once the US gets serious about the relative effectiveness assessments and will add cost-effectiveness to it... At the same time pharma-, biotech- and device companies fight for "access" talent worldwide - it almost feels like what happened to IT folks in the '90 at the height of the .com bubble.

Many of those new companies are smaller shops of ex senior pharma executives while the bigger groups have increased merger activities and/or adding more offices and staff. From what several of my industry friends have told me though, scale hasn't really paid off for many given that the personalized service seems to suffer within the large overhead driven groups. Some also embarked in "interesting" business developments models whereby independent senior staff is helping out in shaping guidelines for government agencies and at the same time offer consultancy services to overcome the challenges they introduce...

Well, it remains to be seen if and when the bubble burst and who will finally be sticking out of the crowd.. I'd be very intersted in thoughts as to how you see this evolving. best,

Ulf