OECD public consultation on access to innovative medicines
Opportunity for patient organisations to respond!
- You can respond directly online by 1 May 2017
- You can also submit comments to EPF using the attached Word document (by 27 April)
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is launching a new initiative to promote an international, high-level dialogue on access to innovative pharmaceuticals and sustainability of pharmaceutical spending.
The OECD is now running a public consultation to identify issues with the current system, to understand which topics are of most importance to stakeholders, to find out if there are any major differences in stakeholder views and canvass new ideas. The responses will be used to inform policy recommendations for governments of OECD Member countries.
For the purposes of this consultation, “innovative therapies” refers to “new medicines that bring significant health benefits to patients”.
Why is this important?
Contributions from patient organisations are necessary to ensure the crucial patient perspective is well reflected in the contributions. Patient organisations hold important knowledge including on access barriers that patients face, issues relating to defining the “added value” of an innovative therapy, and around the importance of patients’ participation at various stages of innovation.
The issues faced by patients may be similar, but also very different depending on country context and/or disease-area. For this reason, it is important that patient organisations from as many countries and disease-areas as possible give their perspective.
EPF would thus strongly encourage our members to contribute their own specific experiences. The Secretariat will prepare a general EPF response based on our work, e.g. the paper “Pricing and Value of Innovative Medicines”, 2016.
What are the questions?
The OECD seeks answers to one or more the following four questions:
- Reflecting on the last 5-10 years, what do you think have been the major changes affecting access to medicines?
- What are the top three issues that must be addressed to ensure access to innovative medicines while maintaining financial sustainability of health systems?
- Why do you think there are issues in ensuring access to innovative medicines while maintaining financial sustainability of health systems?
- What changes would you like to see happen to improve access to innovative therapies?
How to respond
The consultation is being run online via a questionnaire. The deadline is 1 May 2017.
To respond directly to the OECD, please take a look at the OECD website for further information, including regarding privacy and confidentiality rules:
The OECD guidance states that submissions can be a maximum of 1000 words, in English or in French.
The OECD welcomes responses both from individuals and organisations, and responses can be either from a country-specific, regional or international perspective.
Although the OECD prefers online responses, you can also email your response to health.consultation@oecd.org with the subject line “Submission”.
More information