Ten countries in Europe are planning for the arrival of potentially costly new medicines by launching a central database on the medicines.
Today, public health minister Maggie De Block and her colleagues from the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Lithuania, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway will kick off the International Horizon Scanning Initiative.
The initiative aims at enabling governments to identify future challenges and to conduct joint negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to contain prices.
“Patients will have faster access to innovative quality medicines at affordable prices,” says the Belgian minister.
“The more we can prepare for new treatments, the sooner we can make them available for the patients. In a sector as international as the pharmaceutical industry, acting together is important.”
The founding members of the coalition are Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Austria, which already are cooperating under the name BeNeLuxA.
They have already obtained price reductions on certain innovative medicines.
The Brussels Times
