looking at the future of health care – POLITICO

Recent crises have highlighted the critical need for Europe to secure and strengthen its position as leader in medical innovation. As the European Commission works on the next Pharmaceutical Strategy, we need to ensure Europe has the right environment to bring the next generation of treatments to patients. The challenge for the coming decades is not if medical innovation will happen but where it will happen. This article is part of a series explaining that where innovation happens matters for patients, health care systems, the research community, jobs and the economy.

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For the past two years, the world has been facing a major health crisis, requiring an ‘all-hands on deck’ approach from the research-based pharmaceutical industry. Not only have vaccines and treatments been developed and produced in an incredibly short timeframe, but we also continued making sure that every patient around the world received the treatment they needed.

The pandemic has brought to light two undeniable truths: first, medicines are strategic assets and, second, research needs to be done in partnerships with every stakeholder. Alongside the challenges of maintaining the competitiveness of our production facilities and ensuring predictable market access conditions, addressing the innovation challenge is a prerequisite to ensure Europe’s health care resilience. 

In the years to come, Europe will face a research challenge if it does not ensure that the life sciences ecosystem remains strong. At Servier we have decided to bet on Europe since the day the company was created in France, in 1954. Today, 98 percent of the active ingredients of our medicines are produced in Europe, where we have 12 research centers and six production sites.  The skills of our employees, the level of our investments, and the partnerships we have with European companies and institutions, can only achieve their potential if collaboration across the health care system is possible and is supported by a legislative framework that enables innovation to reach patients.

Today, breaking the existing silos within the European research ecosystem is imperative in order to maintain a competitive edge. The pandemic has further shone light on the importance of having an open, cross-functional approach, relying on dynamic partnerships to accelerate research, including between the public and private sectors. The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), launched in 2008 between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical industry, has been key in stimulating collaboration between academia, the industry and organizations. Such partnerships are fundamental to further scientific knowledge and collectively tackle development barriers. Our industry will continue its investment in the newly-developed Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) to build on the progresses made by IMI2.