Pharmaceutical Innovation Platform Publication Describes Policies Which Encourage R&D For Innovative Medicines To Meet Essential Global Health Needs

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Also Included In: Pharma Industry / Biotech Industry
Article Date: 21 Apr 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) is pleased to announce its new publication "The Pharmaceutical Innovation Platform: Meeting Essential Global Health Needs". This explains innovative medicines' contribution to improving health worldwide, the complex process for creating them and the delicate policy balance which has permitted the creation of the vast range of medicines in use today. The need for ongoing pharmaceutical innovation remains as strong as ever; more new medicines are needed to address unmet global health needs and the emergence of resistance to existing therapies.

IFPMA Director General Harvey Bale commented: "Better understanding among public health stakeholders, especially government policy makers, of the process for creating innovative medicines and the policy environment that allows it, will help to make the world a healthier place. Pharmaceutical innovation depends on four separate, but interrelated pillars: successful health care systems, efficient markets, effective use of intellectual property, as well as adequate and predictable regulatory requirements. It is important to have a stable, enabling policy environment in each of these areas to ensure a sustained flow of new medicines for the benefit of patients worldwide."

The new PIP publication shows how R&D-based pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies work with a wide range of partners, including governments, doctors and patients, to produce the safe and effective new medicines and vaccines that society needs. Successive chapters describe how innovation in medicines benefits public health, the challenges of bringing new medicines to market, the policies needed to ensure an innovative environment for medicine development and the additional measures needed to ensure R&D for diseases which disproportionately affect developing countries. These topics are illustrated with case studies and figures that will help policy makers to understand the pharmaceutical research and development process and the challenges involved.

The publication "The Pharmaceutical Innovation Platform, Meeting Essential Global Health Needs" can be downloaded in pdf format from the IFPMA website: http://www.ifpma.org. It is available in English, French, Japanese and Spanish.

About the IFPMA

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation representing national industry associations and companies from both developed and developing countries. Member companies of the IFPMA are research-based pharmaceutical, biotech and vaccine companies.

International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations