Financial Times Global Pharma and Biotech Summit: Taking Action on Innovation in Europe

Stock.adobe.com

Innovation drives the pharma industry forward. Padraic Ward, head of pharma international at Roche, spoke about the issues Europe is facing with promoting pharma innovation at the Financial Times’ 2024 Global Pharma and Biotech Summit. During the conversation, which was hosted by the Financial Times’ global pharmaceutical correspondent Ian Johnston, Ward explained how he’s the seen the innovation-friendly environment change in recent years.

“I was here (at a summit) two years ago and I talked then about the fact that I was really worried about the hollowing out of Europe as a pillar of research and development in healthcare,” he said. “In the two years since, the storm clouds have definitely not gone away. There is at least a silver lining at the moment. There's two ways we can look at this: there's the data which are pretty clear. It says in 2010, Europe represented 40% share of worldwide R&D in healthcare. By 2020, it was down to 30% and on the road to 25% by 2030. That might not seem like a big change, but it's actually really meaningful and important.”

He continued, “The second way to look at is this: over the past couple of years, I've been traveling around, and I've been in Asia, Canada, South America, and around Europe, and the pace of innovation that I see it's just accelerating all the time in those parts of the world. That's the wake-up call really. It's important that we take stock of where we are and actually begin to act. Two years have gone past.”

Johnston asked if Ward believed that the problem throughout the entire industry and which members of the industry needed to wake up to these concerns.

“I talked about a silver lining” Ward answered. “A report was published a couple of months ago and while it doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know, it puts it out there in a very clear and concise way that is telling us exactly what needs to be done.”

He continued, “It's telling all of this is to the audience that may not have been following it. The dragging competitiveness report really looked sector by sector at different industries and how Europe is falling behind, pharmaceutical being one of the examples. It's interesting because when we look at the pharmaceutical sector, it is perhaps one of the markets in which Europe is globally competitive, due to companies like Roche, Novo Nordisk, and Seneca (although not part of the European Union).”

Johnston followed up by asking if it’s possible that the pharma industry was simply punching above its weight compared to other its performance in other regions.

Ward responded, “The pharmaceutical part of it is really important, along with diagnostics, surveillance, and sustainability of healthcare systems. It's all important, and we're going to take it all together and figure out how to make it all more sustainable and stronger than it already is.”