Better Science, Better Health
“Better Science, Better Health” was established by Vital Transformation to facilitate international collaboration in new clinical regulatory pathways, sources of evidence, and harnessing real world data to improve the access of needed new medicines by patients.
“Better Science, Better Health” provides a unique opportunity for international thought leaders to engage directly in these initiatives around the world, while also bringing new relevant voices into the process.
“Better Science, Better Health” has three core areas of focus:
- Harnessing real world evidence for better decision-making and create better patient outcomes
- Implementing new development pathways and evidence generation to improve access to needed new therapies for patients
- Developing best practices, successes, and opportunities for the integration of patient data and analytics to identify new medicines
Latest Events
Webinar: Addressing Geopolitical Challenges to the Price of Medicines
26 October, 4pm UK
Innovative health technologies are often enthusiastically viewed as game changers however their costs are sharply criticised. Take, for example, CAR T-Cell therapy, which has a price of up to 500,000 euro per person. This raises many questions. For example, what is a fair price for a medicine? How should the price be related to the effectiveness or the number of end-users? What about the risks taken by the company to get the therapy to market? What about the risks taken by the end-user who use the medicine? And what about the risks taken by the payer? Is it unrealistic to think that there is a solution that would be fair to all stakeholders? And how can we ensure that the whole system is financially sustainable in the long term?
Early Bird: Diagnosed but not treated? Prioritizing timely care in Europe’s cancer plans
13 October, 2021
Timely access to optimal treatment has great promise for significantly improving outcomes for cancer patients. For instance, the early diagnosis and treatment of skin cancer provides a 99% chance of 5-year survival – yet in later stages, the odds drop to just 27%. As well, the length of time it takes for cancer treatments to reach patients is vitally important to European and national cancer policies, including Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan.
Current political debates around access cancer medicines often overlook the interplay of factors that cause suboptimal treatment rates. Ineligibility requirements, late diagnostic testing, treatment delays, poorly defined clinical guidelines, and resource constraints worsen a patient’s access to timely and adequate treatments.
How can we ensure that patients are diagnosed promptly and can access treatment in a timely manner? Why does reimbursement not always correlate to access to innovative treatments across Europe? How should we prioritize treatment rates in cancer plans?
Webinar: Improving patient safety: why perioperative care and effective monitoring matters
28 September, 2021, 2-3pm CET
In Europe, 2.4 million patients undergo high-risk surgery every year and while surgery is safer today than ever – it is not totally risk free, Evidence suggest that death during surgery is now rare but the 30 days after the procedure are crucial – more than 1 in 100 adults (1.5%) die in the first 30 days following their operation.
During high-risk surgery it is vital that blood continues to flow to organs. If blood pressure drops, and organs do not get enough blood, the higher the risk of severe postoperative complications, such as myocardial injury, acute kidney injury, and increased mortality, These drops in blood pressure are known as intraoperative hypotension (IOH) and are common – particularly in more senior patients. As little as a minute of IOH can increase the risk of patient harm or death and there is low awareness of this urgent issue among patients, clinicians, and policy makers. However, if IOH is effectively monitored and managed, many of these issues can be reduced or avoided. In addition, the need to improve perioperative care has been accentuated by the pandemic, which has put pressure on hospital capacity.
Latest News
H.R. 3’s international reference pricing misses the mark
By Susan Peschin and Duane Schulthess, April 28, 2021
The White House and Congress have declared that reining in Medicare prescription drug costs to help older adults and people with disabilities is a top priority. But one drug pricing strategy on the table would have an outsized negative impact on people with Alzheimer’s disease and decimate research trying to find effective treatments for it.
This strategy, known as international reference pricing, ties the price that Medicare pays for some drugs to those paid by other countries. The idea was first introduced as a model for Medicare Part B drugs by then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar in 2018. The next year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug pricing plan, known as the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3), significantly expanded the scope to allow federal government use of foreign price controls in direct negotiations with pharmaceutical companies for the cost of 250 prescription medicines in Medicare Part B and Part D. It also extended the negotiated price to insurers and the commercial market at large.
Belgium makes a U-turn on AstraZeneca jab in over-55s
Belgium is the latest European country to make a U-turn on the AstraZeneca vaccine, now recommending it for use in people over 55 years of age. The country's Superior Health Council said data from new, large-scale studies in the UK, which showed strong efficacy in older age groups "is reassuring at first sight," and deemed the jab safe and effective. Belgium was one of a handful of countries – including Germany, France and Italy – that limited the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine last month, despite the European Medicines Agency saying it was safe for anyone over the age of 18.
How Europe fell behind on vaccines
The European Union's vaccination effort came under fire just as it was beginning to deliver. Heralded for months as the flagship of European solidarity during the coronavirus pandemic, the European Commission’s strategy of joint vaccine procurement is now being accused by national leaders of being too bureaucratic, too limiting to its members, too slow.
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The Economic Pandemic: Aggressive Testing Is Vital to Controlling the Spread of COVID19 and Saving Europe’s Economy
8th April 2020
By Duane Schulthess, Gergana Koleva, Anja Schiel, Harry P. Bowen, and Luca Pani
For the last month, a debate has raged over which approach to managing the spread of COVID-19 is correct. One aspect of this debate is about the efficacy of widespread testing.
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