Fair pricing forum 2017 meeting report

Overview

The main aim of the Forum, held on the 11th May 2017 in Amsterdam, was to enable stakeholders to discuss options for a fairer pricing system that is sustainable for both health systems and the pharmaceutical industries.

The Forum sought to address three questions:

• What can governments do to ensure fairer medicines prices and greater access?
• What can industry do?
• How can WHO support the process?

Key issues addressed included: developing alternative approaches for research and development (R&D) and business models for innovation; facilitating collaboration among payers by expanding current networks to include other relevant stakeholders and countries; increasing exchange of information, for example to assess the value of new products; promoting transparency of prices paid, R&D costs, production costs, and profit margins.

The Forum was hosted by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport together with WHO, and attended by representatives from non-governmental and patient organizations and Member States (Annex A) and the pharmaceutical industry. The forum was divided into two parts – an interactive plenary session in the morning, based on a series of four short films addressing different aspects of the pricing/access issue, followed by breakout sessions in the afternoon covering related themes (Annex B).