Improving patient value for market access

6 april 2019

On 19 and 20 March, Frans de Loos and Simon van der Schans joined the Pharma Pricing and Market Access congress in Amsterdam. The primary topics discussed were patient value, market access and the national differences in product registration, the central factor being (im)proving patient value for market access.

Understanding value-based pricing and market access from the pharmaceutic point-of-view is valuable knowledge for further development of the Fair Medicine model and ensuring a goal with common ground between the pharmaceutic industry and Fair Medicine.

At the congress, different stakeholders were present: pharmaceutic companies, regulating authorities and consultancies. It resulted in an interesting and constructive discussion on the current pharmaceutic and healthcare problems and potential solutions for product pricing and market access. There is a common goal in ensuring affordability and accessibility of new medicine. From this perspective there was interest in both the Fair Medicine model as a disruptive pricing model and the study performed in collaboration with Gupta strategists: The cost of opportunity. Sharing the study and giving insight into the Fair Medicine model will aid in future improvement of the system and collaboration with all stakeholders.

Next to pricing strategy for the classical products, a lot of attention was given to the Advanced Therapies (ATMP’s), such as gene therapy and CAR-T cell therapy. It is clear that both industry and authorities are struggling how to price these therapies. These ATMP’s are promising but, with only limited experience with these therapies in the market, it is difficult to find consensus on pricing.

We see the field of ATMP’s as a field where we need new business models to make sure that we can quickly and safely develop these products at prices that makes these therapies accessible to all patients that might benefit from these therapies.