Smart Health asks the Director General at the European Medicines Agency about what steps Europe can take to improve innovation in the pharmaceutical sector.
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00:00 What challenges are facing the European Union as it endeavours to make its pharmaceutical
00:07 sector more innovative? According to Emma Cook, the Director General of the European
00:12 Medicines Agency, the situation is rather complicated.
00:19 We need to make sure that we're transparent and accessible, especially for small and medium
00:28 sized enterprises, because small and medium sized enterprises are our superheroes. 20%
00:34 of the products that we authorise in Europe are developed by small and medium sized enterprises.
00:40 And they don't have the same resources to deal with the complexity of some of the regulatory
00:47 processes that are established by legislation here. So we have to think about simplification,
00:53 we have to think about signposting, we have to think about is it meaningful, does it make
00:58 sense, is it accessible. So we're trying to put in tools that help to make the pathways
01:05 clearer and also to make sure that innovators can navigate those pathways with our help.
01:13 The other challenge we have is expertise, because if we think about the medicines of
01:22 the future, the lines between medicines and technologies and medical devices are blurring
01:29 all the time. So we need to make sure that we have a combination of scientific skills,
01:36 technological skills, and we're not just thinking the way we thought 30 years ago.
01:42 [Music]