Educational workshop on pharmaceutical incentives

On 2 February 2018, we organised an educational workshop for patient representatives from our member organisations on the topic of pharmaceutical incentives. The half-day workshop was inspired by the need for more knowledge among patient organisations about this complex topic.

 

A little background

The European Commission is currently working on several studies requested by the Council in its conclusions of 17 June 2016, to shed light on whether and how various incentives for pharmaceutical research and development that exist in EU legislation, including data exclusivity, the so-called supplementary protection certificate, and the incentives embedded in the orphan and paediatric regulations, have an impact on access to medicines.

The EPF workshop provided an opportunity to understand better the complex technical dimensions of incentives, including intellectual property. The workshop is also part of the training offer of EPF to its members to build knowledge and empower them to contribute meaningfully to the current EU political debate on the pharmaceutical incentives from a patient perspective.

The workshop included an overview of the EU process by representatives of the European Commission (DG SANTE), a keynote by Cristiano Bacchini, legal expert, and the perspectives of both originator and generic medicines provided by EFPIA and Medicines for Europe. Around 12 patient organisation leaders from the EPF community attended, representing diverse disease areas. EURORDIS provided the patient perspective focusing on rare diseases and orphan drugs.

What’s next?

A concise report from the meeting will be published in the next weeks and made available on EPF’s website. In follow up to this first meeting, we envisage further dialogue with the wider membership through a Breakfast Briefing highlighting the key issues.

Contact: Kaisa Immonen, Director of Policy.