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A transatlantic conversation on improving timely patient access to healthcare
The safest drug that no one can afford or that arrives too late is of no benefit to a patient.
On Friday, 26 October 2018, AmCham EU hosted a multi-stakeholder transatlantic dialogue with the goal of addressing the ‘access-evidence conundrum’, a key challenge facing healthcare decision-makers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The event brought together regulators, patient advocates and industry representatives from the EU and US to share best practices on how to bring treatments to patients more quickly.
The need for flexibility emerged as a key message from the discussion. There are encouraging developments, including European initiatives such as the Priority Medicines scheme (PRIME) and ADAPT SMART (Accelerated Development of Appropriate Patient Therapies: a Sustainable, Multi-stakeholder Approach from Research to Treatment-outcomes). However, it is equally clear that more needs to be done on all sides to break down silos and work together to incorporate this flexibility into our healthcare systems. To accomplish this, we need to focus on how to better integrate promising innovations like public health genomics and personalised medicine into our healthcare systems to improve patient access.
Timely and affordable patient access requires closer and earlier collaboration between patients, regulators, payers, governments and industry. Regulatory cooperation between the EU and US, including harmonised requirements between the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency (EMA), can reduce the time and costs involved in conducting trials to deliver improved outcomes for patients. Another solution is simplifying the way that Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is performed across Europe, debates upon which are ongoing.
AmCham EU is committed to supporting these discussions and will continue to provide constructive input to stakeholders on both sides of the Atlantic to drive them forward.
Speakers included:
- Dr Sandra Kweder, Deputy Director, FDA Europe Office and FDA Liaison to the EMA
- Helen Lee, Administrator, Medicines: policy, authorisation and monitoring, DG SANTE, European Commission
- Jo De Cock, Director General, INAMI-RIZIV (Belgian National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance)
- Dr Lydia Makaroff, Director, European Cancer Patient Coalition
- Martin Strandberg-Larsen, Vice President, Market Access & Pricing, Nordic-Baltic region, AstraZeneca
- Moderator: Alexander Roediger, Chair, AmCham EU Healthcare Committee and Policy Lead Oncology, EMEAC, MSD
Read our position on Health Technology Assessment
