The Nordic Pharmaceutical Forum (NPF) has just published a new joint Nordic strategy for pharmaceuticals through till 2025, bringing together the procurement bodies of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Set up in 2015 to address several common challenges across the Nordic countries affecting patient access to medicine, the NPF’s new joint strategy focuses on three areas: Innovative procurement cooperation; Security of supply; and a strong Nordic voice.
By focusing on innovative procurement cooperation, the NPF hope to ensure that patients continue to have access to both new and older medicines, as national procurers of hospital medicines are experiencing increasing pressure on budgets due to rising prices for innovative pharmaceuticals. Therefore, the key areas that will be addressed by the current strategy are new and often promising medicines, common Nordic tendering procedures and Horizon Scanning. The NPF will draw on the past 7 years’ worth of experience with joint price negotiations to produce new guidelines, with a particular focus on ATMP’s. Tommy Juhl Nielsen, Director, Pharma Division at Sykehusinnkjøp HF in Norway was optimistic “We will learn from our experience and continue to work on developing common guidelines for common negotiations”.
Security of supply is the second strategic area moving forward for the NPF and in this vein countries will primarily focus on the difficulties in supplying medicines. The NPF identified production of medicines by hospital pharmacies for individual patients as an important element in securing supplies. So, for this reason the member states have agreed to work towards consistent knowledge sharing on the development and production of these magistral pharmaceuticals.
Finally, a strong Nordic voice to increase visibility, was identified as a key aspect of achieving the NPFs ambition of being recognised as an organisation that effectively develops and delivers sustainable healthcare solutions for medicine supply to the public sector.
Sources:
- Amgros. (2023, April 20). New strategy strengthens Nordic collaboration on medicines. Retrieved from Amgros: https://amgros.dk/en/knowledge-and-analyses/articles/new-strategy-strengthens-nordic-collaboration-on-medicines/
- Sonne, F., Nielsen, T. J., Andreassen, E., Aufrecht-Gustafsson, M., Svensson, M., Þórhallsdóttir, Ó., Carlsson, K. (2023, April 20). Nordic Pharmaceutical Forum strategy for 2023 – 2025. Retrieved from Amgros: https://amgros.dk/media/3790/nlf-strategy-final.pdf