As the Nordic Pharmaceuticals Forum approaches its tenth anniversary, Nordic collaboration has never been more important. The 25th of September, representatives from the Nordic Pharmaceuticals Forum met in Stockholm to share knowledge and experience about common challenges in the medicines sector, and discuss goals and initiatives to focus on in the coming years.
With the upcoming overhaul of the EU pharmaceutical legislation, cross-border health threats such as Covid-19 and war in Europe, The Nordic Pharmaceuticals Forum agrees that cooperation is becoming ever more relevant.
– The world around us is changing rapidly, and the medicines sector is becoming increasingly complex. Challenges in the sector are often common across national borders, and especially small countries with small markets such as the Nordics struggle to tackle these challenges alone. Therefore, we have a lot to gain by finding solutions together, says the Nordic Pharmaceuticals Forum.
Focus for future work
The programme included presentations on cooperation between the Nordic medicines agencies, the Nordic Council of Ministers’ health programme, the European Commission’s work on shortages and affordability of medicines, and proposals for how the Nordic countries can improve access to antibiotics.
Sharing knowledge and networking was an important part of this year’s summit as well as work to start identifying areas that the Nordic Pharmaceuticals Forum can focus on in the years to come. Examples are security of supply, joint procurement and price negotiations, horizon scanning, manufacturing, and environmental issues.
Successful collaboration
During the years that it has been active, The Nordic Pharmaceuticals Forum has reached many goals. The forum has for instance developed a common framework for joint price negotiations on new medicines and exchanges experiences on standard terms for Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products. The forum has also developed common environmental criteria for medicines and applied them in one of several joint Nordic tenders. Today, the rest of Europe considers the Nordic collaboration best practice in public procurement, security of supply, sustainability, horizon scanning and cross-border cooperation.
– We’re very proud of our collaboration! We’re also delighted that almost 10 years in, we’re still going strong, and working to develop our cooperation even further. We strongly believe that it makes sense for the Nordic countries to continue to move closer together on our way to becoming perhaps the most integrated pharmaceuticals region in Europe, says the Nordic Pharmaceuticals Forum.
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