EFPIA Head Calls for Pan-European HTA

Richard Bergström, Director General of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) has called for "homogenization of European HTA bodies and regulation".

In an interview with Paul Simms, Chairman, eyeforpharma, Bergström asserted that harmonization is the only way for market access to make a step improvement.

All stakeholders need to invest in larger, more wide-ranging data collection and analysis.“As an industry, we can't have a Slovenian Real World data system; we can't have a separate one for Austria, etc.," he commented. "We need to build a pan-European standardized model and for that to happen you need to have an agreement.”

For Bergström, the other fundamental need for collaboration stems from the need to class innovation, and to prepare better national price reimbursement negotiations. He says that HTAs and payers need to figure out what is valuable to who and, combined with the issues above, this can only become sustainable with a more joined up approach.

“This is coming strongly from the EMA, from the top payers, from the regulators. This is what they want; a new interface. And therefore the industry needs to also get its act together in figuring out what that interface should look like.”  

Bergström added that he thinks this standardzation is inevitable, and that the industry needs to prepare for it.