Innovative leadership, productive capacity and the ability to drive the country’s economic and social growth make the pharmaceutical industry an essential strategic sector.
The Director General of Farmaindustria, Juan Yermo, presents the sector’s potential and challenges on the second day of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Spain.
The Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, talks about the forthcoming publication of the Strategy for the pharmaceutical industry in Spain, which will be published in the coming months.
Pharmaceutical companies, representatives of the Administration, regulatory bodies, the healthcare sector and patients met at the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Santander.
Source: Farmaindustria.es
The pharmaceutical sector is one of the four sectors considered strategic in the Open Strategic Autonomy proposal for Europe, which aims to build a more competitive and resilient region in the face of geopolitical or technological changes.
In our country, the pharmaceutical industry has the potential to become a global platform for innovation and biomedical production, as Juan Yermo, director general of Farmaindustria, explained at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Pharmaceutical Industry: ‘Innovative leadership, production capacity and the ability to drive economic and social growth in the country make the pharmaceutical industry an essential strategic sector’.
In terms of innovation, the pharmaceutical industry has maintained a sustained growth in R&D investment of 5.7% over the last decade, with close to 1.4 billion euros in 2023. This figure represents 20% of all industrial R&D in the country and includes more than 830 million dedicated to clinical trials, making Spain an international leader in this field.
During his presentation on ‘Potential and challenges for the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Spain’, Yermo also highlighted Spain’s production capacity, where in recent years there has been an increase in the number of production plants to 174, of which 106 are dedicated to medicines for human use. The production of medicines has increased by 40% in the last three years, to 23,000 million euros, which represents almost 30% of the production of high-tech goods in Spain.
‘These figures show a path ‘that can allow us to continue to advance and become a true international production hub, thanks to a good combination of production quality, costs and flexibility’, Yermo stressed.
Employment, with more than 56,000 direct workers and 270,000 indirect and induced workers, shows the pharmaceutical industry’s capacity as a driving force for the country’s economy, with characteristics of stability, equality and diversity that make it a quality employment.
These are the foundations on which the draft Strategy for the Pharmaceutical Industry in Spain is based, on which Farmaindustria is working together with the Government and whose pillars are access and sustainability, R&D and production. ‘Our success as a strategic sector will depend to a large extent on the multiple legislative and regulatory initiatives at European and national level to help us tackle the challenges in the field of access, R&D and production and strategic autonomy.
Regulation was the common thread running through this industry meeting, which also coincided with a time of change at both national and European level. At the national level, the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) regulation is currently undergoing a period of allegations. ‘We hope that the new regulation will ensure a more participatory and better defined model of assessment, avoiding re-evaluations, ensuring that the social value of the medicine is considered and helping to reduce access times.
Source: Farmaindustria.es
The conference was attended by the Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, who spoke about the Strategy for the Pharmaceutical Industry in Spain, which will be published in the coming months. He stressed that this is the first time that a joint initiative has been carried out by four ministries and the Presidency of the Government, and that it is a framework that ‘will improve transparency in funding decisions, preserving confidentiality to guarantee the Ministry of Health’s negotiating capacity with pharmaceutical companies’.
Padilla also referred to the Royal Decree on the Evaluation of Health Technologies, which is currently in the process of being submitted for allegations. He stressed that, with this regulation, the Administration wants to ‘establish a predictable system, which incorporates the participation of different actors who were not there before’, in reference to patient organisations and healthcare professionals.
The two days of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Spain were attended by representatives of pharmaceutical companies, regulatory bodies and the Administration, healthcare professionals and patients to analyse the impact of the new regulation and the open strategic autonomy.
