(Adnkronos) - “Nel settore farmaceutico penso l’Italia potrebbe fare meglio nell’accesso all’innovazione in termini di velocità. Le nostre nuove soluzioni terapeutiche, tutti gli sforzi e tutte le migliaia di persone che lavorano per portare innovazione in Italia, sono nulli, non servono se queste terapie non arrivano al paziente. Quindi la velocità di accesso all’innovazione è molto importante”. Lo ha dichiarato Peter Guenter, CEO Healthcare di Merck Group, in occasione di un incontro con la stampa presso lo stabilimento Merck di Guidonia (Roma).
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00:00Italy plays a very important role for Merck worldwide.
00:10Why? Because Merck in Italy is present in all phases of the whole chain of value and pharmaceutical innovation.
00:18Let's start with our Merck Life Science, which provides products and services to the world of public and private research,
00:25to the Italian biotech, where innovation really comes from.
00:29We continue with the fundamental research in our site in Ivrea, then with the pharmaceutical development here in Guidonia.
00:37We do clinical trials with more than 5,000 patients in Italy.
00:41In the end, the result of that innovation obviously also reaches the market, to the Italian patients,
00:47who in the end will benefit from the fruit of that innovation.
00:52We are therefore very proud of what we do in Italy with the 1,200 people who work for Merck in Italy.
01:03I think there are two things where Italy could do better.
01:06Number one is access to innovation in terms of speed.
01:10Our new therapeutic solutions, all the efforts and all the thousands of people who work to bring innovation to Italy,
01:17are useless if these therapies do not reach the patient.
01:21So the speed of access to innovation is very important.
01:25When your product is approved by the European Pharmaceutical Agency,
01:30in some countries patients can immediately benefit from these new drugs.
01:35In other countries it takes a lot of time, and unfortunately Italy is one of those countries
01:40where it takes a long time between European registration and access to the patient.
01:45So my appeal is to shorten such a waste of time from the point of view of price and reimbursement,
01:51so that Italian patients with serious diseases can benefit from the fruit of such therapeutic solutions.
02:01Number two, realistic budgets.
02:03We as a pharmaceutical industry run huge risks when it comes to generating new therapeutic solutions.
02:09You can't do it if you don't have acceptable prices and margins.
02:12Otherwise it is not possible to reinvest and run risks again to generate new innovation.
02:18Therefore we ask that starting from the drug balance, the Italian government establishes a realistic balance.
02:25We already have relatively low prices in Italy compared to other European countries.
02:30And on top of that we pay a clawback, why?
02:32Because the budget is set artificially low.
02:35Therefore the real expense is higher than that budget,
02:38and part of that difference has to be reimbursed by the pharmaceutical companies in the Italian state,
02:44in the form of a clawback.
02:46And that is also not sustainable.
02:48So my second request, in addition to the speed of access to innovation,
02:52is to establish a realistic budget for medicine,
02:55so that the clawback can be eliminated or significantly reduced.
03:01So I think that Artificial Intelligence, Gen AI,
03:04the AI of the new generation, the analysis of big data,
03:09will be a turning point for many sectors, including the pharmaceutical industry.
03:14I can talk about many potential applications in the entire chain of value,
03:18of what we do, production and commercial operations.
03:22But I think the biggest potential, change of paradigm,
03:25will be in the area of research, of what we do.
03:28I think that with the analysis of big data and Artificial Intelligence,
03:32we will be able to discover new scenarios and new biological goals.
03:37We will be able to find and design molecules in a faster and more efficient way than today.
03:43And in the end we will also be able to conduct clinical studies
03:46in a faster and more economically advantageous way.
03:49I think that the biggest revolutionary effect of Artificial Intelligence and big data
03:54will definitely be in the R&D field of the pharmaceutical industry.