According to research from the US Health and Human Services, US tax payers pay 1.8 times the international price for medicines and are ‘subsidizing’ global healthcare. In order to combat this imbalance, the Trump administration is proposing the “International Pricing Index” (IPI) payment model to reduce reimbursement levels for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Following Vital Transformation's research on investment success factors for biotech companies released at the European Health Forum Gastein, Vital Transformation presented original research modelling the potential impact both short and long term for patients, payers, and industry for such proposals, and show how the IPI can impact access and innovation broadly. As well, the panellists placed the IPI into the context of other models currently being investigated internationally such as value based payments, managed entry agreements, and adaptive pathways.

Publish date: February 28, 2019 By Sharon Worcester The high cost of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy largely limits its use to the sickest patients and prohibits experimentation in “less-diseased” populations, outcomes data suggest.

By Duane Schulthess - 26 December 2018

It’s odd that a city like Brussels managed to carve itself out a niche as one of the major political centres of the world. The medieval site of a notoriously typhus infested bog, one of the main streets in downtown, ‘Rue du Marais’, literally means, “Street of the Swamp” and the name of the city itself comes from the old Flemish word Broekzele, which roughly translates to ‘settlement in the swamp.’ So, when one talks politically of draining the swamp, at least in Brussels, it carries a literal interpretation that is often distant from the current political climate in DC.

What goes without question is that both Brussels and DC are currently heaving under waves of increasing populist threats to drain political swamps. With the Brexit referendum followed by the election of President Trump, we also now have the Yellow Vest protests in France coupled with a letter accusing President Macron of treason signed by a dozen French generals and a former Minister of Defense. There is an air of anger against political institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, and increasingly, the heated rhetoric is being pointed at the price of medicines.

Vital Transformation released its newest research at the European Health Forum Gastein on October 4th, 2018. Our project analysed 116 EU biotech start-ups from the period of 2001 – 2007 through September 21, 2018 from the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain. We focused on companies developing medicinal products for human consumption. In this work, we compared the impact of IPOs (stock market listings), private investors, and direct EU funding on their success or failure.