‘A better way to incentivize innovation for neglected diseases’ – Prof. Aidan Hollis

A better way to incentivize innovation
for neglected diseases

September 7th 2017 at 2 pm

Room Gaudi – UZ Leuven, Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven

Follow the silver signals, Psychiatry, second floor

Diseases that are mainly suffered by poor people attract less investment for treatments and cures, since pharmaceutical companies are motivated by profit opportunities. The lack of effective commercial demand, however, does not indicate a lack of human need. What’s the best way to get new therapies developed given this problem? There are two generic approaches: governments and foundations subsidize drug development (push) or a viable market is created (pull). The pull system is, of course, that one that people in rich countries rely on to get new medicines brought to market. The Health Impact Fund is a proposal for a way to support a viable market-based system that would incentivize firms to bring new products to market in cases where the therapeutic value is high but the effective market demand is low. It incorporates delinkage — a key recommendation of the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines — and competition — to reduce costs.

Aidan Hollis

is Professor of Economics at the University of Calgary, and President of Incentives for Global Health. Educated at Cambridge and Toronto universities, his research focuses on the industrial organization of pharmaceutical markets: competition, pricing, and innovation, with a strong policy focus. Canadian generic drug pricing rules are now based on a proposal he developed. He served as the TD MacDonald Chair of Industrial Economics at the Competition Bureau, Ottawa and has provided expert testimony in cases before the Federal Court, Appeals Court and Supreme Court of Canada.

‘A better way to incentivize innovation for neglected diseases’ – Prof. Aidan Hollis