Notes from EU Parliament meeting on innovation+access for medical technologies

Today I am attending a meeting at the European Parliament on new models of innovation for medical technologies. The event was organized by three MEPs, Thijs Berman, Eva Joly and Carl Schlyter, in collaboration with the European Parliament Working Group on Innovation, Access to Medicines and Poverity-Related Diseaes, and several consumer rights, public health and development NGOs (TACD, Health Action International, KEI, Oxfam and IQsensato).

I was given 10 minutes to introduce the topic of innovation inducement prizes, and used these slides.

The 4.5 hour session at the Parliament is organized into two large panels with a total of 15 speakers, plus other speakers to begin and close the session. It began with a critique of the current system, including discussions of reliance on medically unimportant products, excessive marketing, high prices and access barriers. The second panel introduced the main reform efforts, including the medical R&D treaty and delinkage of R&D costs and prices of products. Panel 3 provided more detail on prizes, and developing countries perspectives, including a presentation of the India open source drug development program.

The Parliament meeting is the first effort to bring the delinkage debate here. It will certainly be important to do quite a bit more work. This afternoon there is a private workshop focusing on the “asks” to the EU in these areas. That meeting will probably release some time of the joint statement.

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