The pharmaceutical industry is an industry in medicine that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical drugs for use as medications to be administered to patients (or self-administered), with the aim to cure and prevent diseases, or alleviate symptoms.  Pharmaceutical companies may deal in generic or brand medications and medical devices. They are subject to a variety of laws and regulations that govern the patenting, testing, safety, efficacy using drug testing and marketing of drugs. The global pharmaceuticals market produced treatments worth $1,228.45 billion in 2020 and showed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.8%.