Lechleiter wants policy that spurs innovation
pharmafile | June 8, 2012 | News story | Business Services, Manufacturing and Production, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Lechleiter, Obama, PhRMA, US, heathcare, lilly
Lilly’s leader is calling on governments to take the long-term view when it comes to healthcare policy.
John Lechleiter who is Lilly’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said that too often healthcare policies focus on the short-term and on making budget cuts.
In a keynote address at the Financial Times US healthcare and life sciences conference, Lechleiter emphasised the importance of a policy environment that spurs innovation.
He said: “What’s required are healthcare policies, guided by a long-term perspective, that provide access to a continuing flow of innovative medicines to help meet the growing needs of people around the world.”
Lechleiter, who is also chairman of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America, said: “Innovation requires long-term thinking, especially in an enterprise that typically requires more than a decade to bring a new medicine to patients.
“We’ve stayed the course through challenging times in the past by following the science, and we need to maintain that same perspective today.”
He urged a similar long-term approach to healthcare policy and warned that short-term focus on costs and budgets could endanger long-term gains from innovation.
The backdrop to his speech is the new budget in America, announced by President Obama in February, which aims to cut the US deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade, and includes cuts to health insurance programmes.
This was met with criticism by US lobby group PhRMA, who said the budget for 2013, which will see $364 billion cut from spending on healthcare programmes over a ten-year period, could ‘destabilise the industry’ and risk jobs.
The situation in the US is by no means unique, with many other countries – notably in Europe – imposing strict spending cuts in areas such as health, with a strong focus on reducing their drugs budget.
Lechleiter said: “Without a supportive policy environment, one that reflects a long-term perspective on the role of medical innovation in healthcare, there is in fact no guarantee that the work of discovering and developing new medicines will go on at all.”
He added that the industry must continue to advocate for policies that sustain and encourage innovation, such as intellectual property protection, and a regulatory system that keeps pace with modern science.
“The good news is, time and time again, medical innovation has reset the standard for what we can expect from the healthcare system and from human life,” said Lechleiter.
“Indeed, I believe we are only at the beginning of what will be known as the ‘biomedical century.’”
Ben Adams
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