Reports have shown that approvals for first-of-a-kind drugs were all-time-high in the previous year. The annual tally of new United States drugs reached to its highest level in past 19 years.

The rise in number of approvals clearly reflect an industry wide focus on drugs meant for diseases that are either rare or are hard to treat.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2015 alone approved approximately 45 drugs with never-before-sold ingredients. The numbers of approvals were higher than that of 2014’s 41 approvals and were the highest since 1996.

As per analysts, drug makers have become more efficient in selecting the most promising drugs in their research and development pipelines.

According to industry data analyzed by Tim Anderson of Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, between 2997 and 2011, only one in 19 drugs entering early-stage testing made it to the market.

“These improvements hopefully reflect the pay-off from the industry’s conscious decade-long efforts to ‘turn around’ R&D’, said Mr. Anderson.

Although 2015 presents a better view of drug makers in US, still the prospect for further progress in 2016 for the pharmaceuticals industry appears to be quite challenging.

Increased political focus on drug pricing has punctured both biotech and specialty pharma valuations in recent months. Big pharmaceutical companies are still struggling to get a decent return on the billions of dollars spent annually on research and development, since many new medicines are forecast to yield relatively modest sales.

The prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming US president could further weaken the confidence in the profitability of the pharmacy sector in 2016.