Folks an article on the intensified pricing collaboration activities among European countries. This has been a long debate for years but it seems more concrete steps are undertaken. Its a pity that countries still don't realize that engaging with the industry on different and novel payment models is more promising than the ever increasing eagerness on pure cost mindset "collaboration". Affordability is an important criterium and can be adressed differently, all these joint purchasing efforts however will only create more inefficiencies and bureaucracy and most likely increase time to access fo ..read more

Dear All, Olivier, the "work horse" ;) finally managed to get all the chapters back from the various authors and the book goes into print. Book should be available at Routledge in a couple of month. Regards Ulf ..read more

Hi All, just saw an interesting post (https://www.iqwig.de/en/press/press-releases/press-releases/adaptive-pathways-ema-still-leaves-open-questions-unanswered.7492.html) from IQWIG, that speaks to the difficulties to get even a clinical effectiveness assessment under one roof as always proposed by various stakeholders. Clearly the RWE bit is still an open book in many ways but a topic to be tackled on various fronts in order to make true value based pricing a reality. Cheers Ulf ..read more

Financial Times By Andrew Ward April 25, 2016   What is the value of a human life? It is one of the most fraught questions in public policy as governments around the world struggle with rising healthcare costs from ageing populations. The answer matters not only to patients, taxpayers and insurers, but also to the pharmaceuticals companies seeking rewards for the medical advances that have helped double global life expectancy in the past century. Nowhere is the debate more intense than in the UK, where budget pressure on the National Health Service has capped growth of the annual £1 ..read more

Dear Readers, I am currently building my access team in EMEA and have a few positions open. I am looking for a patient access lead oncology Switzerland/Austria. See job posting: https://lnkd.in/d3MyQgQ  Equally I am looking for patient access heads for Italy and the UK. Oncology experience plus experience with local P&R submissions and negotiations is required. If you are interested please get in touch: ulf.staginnus@baxalta.com Cheers Ulf ..read more

Dear All, Some interesting developments on the Cancer Drug Fund have been announced today. Cheers Ulf ..read more

Dear All, hope you are getting ready for the summer.. just came across an interesting post on the GKV Spitzenverband website. A latest study from the Technical University of Berlin demonstrates the fastest (even after AMNOG) and broadest access to medicines occurs in Germany as compared to other EU countries (well, it´s nothing really new). This comes at a "cost" with highest pharmaceutical prices being paid in Germany (we also knew that). The study has a lot of good sources such as the times to access after EMA approval (many of you in the industry get this question all the time from managem ..read more

Dear All, first of all apologies for the quite time lately, been busy with various projects. Seeing the article from Ed it reminded me of the ever ongoing discussion about the value topic and if agreement can be found between payers and industry. Certain attempts, thinking here of VBP in the UK have failed and others have not taken off. Ed does a good job in listing the issues and especially pointing out the ways the industry could change things internally. This is definitely true and also a very old story. I have a bit of my own theory why things are so slow to catch on internally ..read more

Dear All, just saw this on BBC Now if that scheme materializes it truly deserves to be called an innovative one .. Cheers Ulf ..read more

Dear All, a little post from the beach, I trust most of the readers enjoying their well deserved summer vacation. By popular demand in the past when I conducted and published my salary review, and actually due to a lot of personal experience, I am finally getting around on writing a little about the topic of interviews and job search. Most positions in our field are recruited by headhunters or company talent scouts but also network and other ads, e.g. on pages like healtheconomics.com and healtheconomics.org are important information for job seekers. Networking through linkedin.com has a ..read more