2024-01-31 16:38:35
The directors of the drug control and approval bodies of Germany, Austria and Switzerland agreed this Wednesday during a conference in Berlin on the need to simplify procedures to accelerate market access for innovative products, something that is possible as the pandemic demonstrated. of covid-19.
Archive photo of the Reina Sofía hospital in Murcia. EFE/Marcial Guillén
The covid pandemic showed that innovation can be accelerated.
Innovation and regulation do not have to be opposites,” said the head of Swiss regulator Swissmedic, Raimund Bruhin, during the panel “Access to the market for innovative medicines and therapies” of the congress DACH Healthcare Innovationorganized by Bamberg Health.
The director of the German entity, BfArM, Karl Broichfor its part, pointed out that it is necessary to study what processes can be simplified to accelerate the approval of medicines and vaccines and facilitate their access to the market.
Problems in innovation after the pandemic
“Sometimes one of the reasons that delay processes is that companies take a long time to answer our questions. But we also have to ask ourselves if we ask too many questions or if we don’t ask the right questions,” he said. “During the pandemic it was shown that it is possible to accelerate authorization processes,” he added.
Bruhin and his Austrian counterpart Günter Waxenecker agreed that control entities cannot limit themselves to waiting for companies and study centers to submit applications for approval to study them.
“The approval process should not start with the submission of an application. We have to be proactive, work with companies and think tanks, be aware of what they are doing,” Bruhin said.
“In Austria we have opened the possibility for companies to present their projects to us,” added Waxenecker.
Broich said that the use of digitization and artificial intelligence can help simplify procedures and pointed out that his agency’s relationship has changed over time.
A new vision
“When I started working at BfArM we saw ourselves as a protection body of the consumer. Now the vision has changed and we understand that there has to be an exchange with the industry,” he explained.
On behalf of the industry, the director of political relations of the German vaccine manufacturer Novavax warned that for innovations to reach the people, they not only need approval by regulatory bodies. controlbut also that they open access to the market.
In this sense, he complained in the presentation “From the pandemic to the endemic: the future of vaccination against covid-19” that, of all the vaccine contracts against covid-19only one has been renovated, leading to the creation of a monopoly and dependency that can endanger supply.
DACH Healthcare Innovation included a panel on digitalization
In addition to the panel dedicated to innovations in the health sector and the acceleration of procedures for market access, there were others, such as the one dedicated to digitalization and the one that addressed the administrative innovations in the healthcare sector.
The audience addressed by the congress are regulators and officials, representatives of ministries of Health and other government agencies involved in healthcare policies and regulationsas well as entrepreneurs and emerging companies that work in the field of technology and healthcare innovation and doctors, among other professionals in the sector.
PHOTO EFE/Alejandro García
#pandemic #showed #innovation #accelerated