Joaquín Rodrigo, president of Biosim, has participated in the fourth session of the series of meetings "Our contribution to the State Pact for Health", organized by the Spanish Association of Pharmaceutical Law (Asedef), which has also brought together other representatives of the employers of the Spanish pharmaceutical industry such as Farmaindustria and Aeseg.
During the session, which was held at the headquarters of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy on Monday, January 22, 2018, the bases that a State Pact for health should have were discussed. In the opinion of those involved, it must be based on the principles of efficiency, equity and sufficient financing, and include all the agents involved, such as political groups, the government, the different administrations, patients and the industry itself.
From the perspective of the Spanish Association of Biosimilars, Joaquín Rodrigo considered it essential that this agreement exist and advocated avoiding the use of Health as an element of confrontation, and defended that the biosimilars industry also have a place in it because these medicines contribute to the System National Health just what the pact itself would claim, 'efficiency, greater accessibility and greater sustainability'. According to Joaquín Rodrigo, the budgetary impact of biosimilars on the SNS between 2009 and 2016 reaches savings of close to 500 million euros, and the estimate for the period between 2017 and 2020, with the molecules that have been lost and are going to losing the patent is close to 2.000 million euros.
The president of BioSim was in favor of a Strategic Plan that promotes biosimilars, which could have the support of the SNS Interterritorial Council, with four main objectives: adapt Spanish regulations to the particularities of biosimilars, promote opportunities for biosimilars contribute to a greater extent to the sustainability of the SNS, promote the training of SNS professionals in biosimilars, and train and inform the citizen, in general, and the patient, in particular.