OCU asks the European Commission improvements in the European pharmaceutical system

OCU has led together with other 36 organizations across Europe an open letter to the European Commission requesting improvements in the pharmaceutical system. On 17 June, the 28 EU Ministers of Health agreed to address imbalances in pharmaceutical systems. In its conclusions it invited the European Commission to undertake a critical review of the effects of the current rules on intellectual property incentives for biomedical innovation.

Incentives for innovation in medicine have a huge impact, such as Hepatitis C. OCU recalls that the Spanish public administration was spent on drugs over 20,000 million euros in 2015, 9.5% more than past year. Of these 11,700 million, they were spent on hospitals 26.2% compared to 2013 and much of this increase was due to disbursement treatments for hepatitis C, which required a total of 1,090 million euros.

In this link https://www.ocu.org/salud/derechos-paciente/noticias/incremento-gasto-farmaceutico-hospitalario can see an example of how the patent system in drug has a strong impact on public spending.

The European Commission has decided to undertake an ambitious research includes analysis of the impact of the current incentives for biomedical innovation model based on the monopoly system of drug patents. OCU along with the other associations requested that a transparent, independent and objective investigation, to determine whether the current system of innovation in drug is proving effective and meet the real health needs of the population and that measures be taken to improve is made the efficiency. The Commission has announced that the methodology and work deadlines for the end of December 2016. The participation of them in the process is taken into account.

OCU already alerted the superfluous spending novel drugs with higher prices and that do not add value to standard treatment. The findings indicated that drug into 4 groups savings stood at 70 million euros a year. For more information https://www.ocu.org/salud/medicamentos/noticias/despilfarro-medicamentos