Madrid, June 27, 2017. – The commitment to transparency, contribution to the sustainability of the healthcare system and investment in research and development are the three pillars on which the social commitment of the innovative pharmaceutical industry in Spain is based.  Jesus Acebillo, President of FARMAINDUSTRIA, made this clear during the Association’s Ordinary General Assembly, in which the annual report on activities for 2016 and the budget for the current year were approved.  The event, held on Tuesday at the Lázaro Galdiano Foundation in Madrid, was attended by the General Secretary of Health and Consumer Affairs, José Javier Castrodeza, at the closing ceremony.

In his speech to the Assembly, Acebillo reflected on the challenges facing the sector, highlighting that of transparency, which since last year has involved the publication of companies’ collaborations with health organizations and professionals. “We are on the right track. Transparency is the means to show the need and legitimacy of our collaboration with the health system and its professionals, essential to promote research and the proper use of the medicine, and, in turn, prevent conflicts of interest. And the broad institutional and media support confirms this. With that belief, we must continue to advance, through dialogue with organizations, professionals and patients, to improve this commitment to transparency and to continue to contribute to Spain’s health professionals at the forefront of clinical and scientific knowledge,” he explained.

The president of FARMAINDUSTRIA has framed the initiative of transparency within the social commitment taken on by the innovative pharmaceutical industry in Europe and Spain, a challenge that is also based on the leadership of the companies in the investment in R+D or the effort of the sector to safeguard the sustainability of the Spanish health system and public coffers.

Guarantee of access and sustainability

In this regard, Acebillo highlighted the results of the relationship of dialogue and understanding strengthened in recent years with the Government, through the Ministries of Finance and Health, and cemented in the Collaboration Agreement signed in 2015 and renewed last December 2016. “This agreement allows us to show our responsibility in a complicated stage in which budgetary control is still inescapable when facing the final ‘exit’ from financial the crisis and, at the same time, to help safeguard patients’ access to innovation,” he said.

Regarding investment in research and development, the President of the Association has ensured that “defending the value of innovation is to defend the research model we represent and the results it has given over the years, to the point of completely transforming  the approach of the disease and the life expectancy.” In addition, the commitment to R&D, he added, “places the pharmaceutical industry within a ‘vanguard’ sector, as it is representative of the productive model towards which Spain must walk, generating wealth and qualified employment and with strong drag capacity for the whole economy.”

On this basis, and in view of the need to reconcile access to innovation and sustainability, Acebillo underlined the challenge of “finding formulas that improve the efficiency of public health systems”. “We must continue to make progress, through concrete proposals, that can be shared by the authorities and public managers towards incorporating into the health system the concept of health and cost results, that is, the concept of value.”

The activity and data contained in the 2016 Annual Report, adopted at the Assembly, reflect to a large extent these commitments in which the pharmaceutical industry has embarked upon.  The document, which can be found on FARMAINDUSTRIA’s website, once again reflects the industry’s leadership in R&D, as it accounts for 20% of the total allocated to this activity by all Spanish industrial sectors.  Thirty new innovative medicines reached Spanish patients last year.

Other highlights of the report are that the Spanish pharmaceutical industry is the most productive sector in Spain per worker (double the industry average), exceeding 15,000 million in value (both in production and sales), is one of the leaders in exports (more than 10.6 billion euros per year) and holds the most stable, qualified and diverse employment of all Spanish industry.