Health innovation: creative approaches to improving access to medicines globally
5 December 2019
IIPP Fellow Victor Roy presented his work on the role of the public sector to deliver value through health innovation, specifically through the case of hepatitis C.
On December 3, IIPP Fellow Victor Roytravelled to Geneva to speak at .The focus for this one-day symposium, organised in collaboration with the and the , was onthe global challenge of improving access to new breakthrough medicines.Using relatively new curative treatments for hepatitis C virus (HCV) as an extended case study, the attendees pursued novel thinking around how to scale up treatment and also ensure that future breakthroughs are accessible to all who need them.
Roy, who is a practicing physician and completed a doctorate in the political economy of biomedical innovation, spoke on a panel that focused specifically on evolutions in innovation models. The panel featured speakers from the industry, including a member of ’ public policy team as well as the head of , a global non-profit R&D network. Royspoke specifically about the significant role of the public sector in the process,and challenged the audience to reflect on the core principles that should underpin the enterprise of developing new drugs.
“Innovation not only has a rate but a direction. We often talk about the pace and speed of drug development but how do we realise those real breakthrough directions for health? Not just the incremental advances, but the kinds of medicines that transform care for a particular health need,” said Roy.
Roy used his platform to share ideas based on his research here at IIPP about ٳrole of the public sector in facilitating long-term value creation. He argued that while the state’s contributions are often ‘black boxed’ as basic science, public investments play a key role across multiple stages of the process. The state is often the first entity to invest in long-term patient investment, harbouring the initial risks at the early stages and laying the groundwork, long before private sector businesses get involved. Then, once public sector-led research has created impressivebreakthroughs in the field, the initial public sector success then crowds in private investment.
Giving specific examples of his research, Roy pointed to the case of the hepatitis C virus.For a decade after its identification in 1989, the hepatitis C virus could not be grown in cell culture in a lab, so drug developers had no efficient way to test components of the virus to stop the replication of it. However, thanks to investment from the German and US government, throughٳUS Small Business Innovation Research Programme, funding the Charles M.Rice at Rockefeller Universityand his fellow scientists, they were able to develop the (that allowed the virus to be grown in the lab). This paved the way for drug developers torevolutionise the treatment of this disease. Later, public investments also supported the start-up business that would ultimately develop the curative backbone of the most widely used hepatitis C treatment,sofosbuvir.
Yet access to the treatments were threatened due to the launch prices of the treatments in high income countries. The story of hepatitis C has been well documented in the media, including Roy’s . In his comments in Geneva, Roy closed by asking an all important question: “How canwe build ‘access’ into the design features of future innovation models? Not as aDz-dzconsideration, but as an-Գٱdesign requirement?”