Changing the business model, increasing the partners, sustaining the health system and improving the quality of life of patients are the big challenges that confront the pharmaceutical sector, as highlighted by Teresa Millán, Federico Plaza and Eugeni Sedano, in an informative breakfast organized by ATREVIA, global communication consultant with no.1 Latin spirit in Spain.
The three experts reveal the key facts from a very complicated sector like medicine, that needs continuous evolution and allocates significant resources to research. As Federico Plaza stressed, who is responsible for the area of Government Affairs in Roche, one of the immediate challenges is that the budgets from the central and autonomous governments become more and more restrictive, “They are forced to immediately abort the issue of sustainability”. In this sense, he explained that the percentage of GDP devoted to health in Spain is much lower than other European countries, although health is a priority for citizens.
Teresa Millán, Corporate affairs and CSR director of Lilly, values the know-how of the sector and insists that patients themselves must get involved and be responsible for their own treatments. “The laboratory that develops a drug is the one that has the most information and of the best quality on the pathology in question”, stated Millán, but the patient should be responsible so that between everyone we improve the quality of life of complex pathologies like diabetes, hepatitis C and cancer.
Eugeni Sedano, director if Institutional Relations from the Esteve Group, highlighted the importance of partners in the sector where patient associations are increasingly important and they become main players in the health system. The main commitment of the pharmacists in society is that the patient receives the correct treatment and all citizens receive the best treatments in alignment with their needs and health.