The People's Prescription report calls for a transformation of the health innovation system

The people's prescription: Re-imagining health innovation to deliver public value is intended to spur policymakers into action by providing ideas, principles and policy proposals to create a better health innovation system that delivers innovative medicines for all who need them.

After articulating the key problems of the current model of pharmaceutical innovation (e.g. public health needs unmet, high prices, lack of transparency, and an increasingly financialised business model), the report presents key principles that would underpin a public-interest and health-driven approach to pharmaceutical innovation: directed mission setting, collaboration and transparency, affordability and access, and long-term horizons.

The remedies that follow are divided into two parts: first identifying immediate actions that governments can take to tackle the urgent crisis in patient access to medicines, and then a transformative approach based on mission-oriented research and innovation, learning from experiments across the world. We must do better.

Executive summary

Read the executive summary of the report here.

The report launched on 17 October with an event at the Royal Society of Medicine, chaired by Lord Jim O'Neill (Chair of Chatham House, formerly Chair of the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance). 

Professor Mariana Mazzucato, Director of IIPP and the lead author introduced the report, which was followed by responses from: 

• Dr Charles Clift (Senior Consulting Fellow, Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security; Founding Chairman, Medicines Patent Pool)
• Dr Mariângela Simão, (Assistant Director-General for Drug Access, Vaccines and Pharmaceuticals, World Health Organisation)
• Professor Martin McKee (Professor of European Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Co-Director, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies) and
• Professor Kalipso Chalkidou (Director of Global Health Policy and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development; Founding Director, NICE International).

Launch video

Event gallery

Download the full report

Read The people's prescription: Re-imagining health innovation to deliver public value

Link

Press release

The health innovation system is ‘broken’ and failing patients, warns UCL report

Media coverage

Highlights

• The Washington Post: Big Pharma is hurting drug innovation, by Mariana Mazzucato
• BMJ: Drug companies are incentivised to profit not to improve health, says report
• BBC's Today programme: Mariana Mazzucato discusses the report (from 47:08)
• The Times: Drug firms ‘chase profits and ignore global killers’
• The Times: The NHS is being impeded by greedy drug companies, by Mariana Mazzucato
• The Lancet: Dealing with drug pricing: not just one solution

October 2018

• News Medical Life Sciences: Healthcare systems fail to deliver at affordable prices finds report
• Eurasisa Review: Report Warns Health Innovation System Is ‘Broken’ And Failing Patients
• Health Policy Watch: “The People’s Prescription”: New Report Calls For Value Creation Instead Of Value Extraction In Pharmaceutical R&D
• myScience: The health innovation system is ’broken’ and failing patients
• Medicus Mundi Schweiz: The health innovation system is ‘broken’ and failing patients
• *Research: Public health needs missions approach, says Mazzucato
• The Ecologist: The health innovation system is 'broken'
• The National: Health systems need overhauled to help offer affordable treatments 
• L'Echo: La santé a mal à sa recherche
• IP Watch: New Report Calls For Value Creation Instead Of Value Extraction In Pharmaceutical R&D
• OnMedica: Health innovation hampered by drive for profit, report warns
• Pharmafile: Health innovation system is broken and failing patients, new report argues
• The London Economic: Drug firms accused of putting profits before health of the nation

Read more about our work on health innovation

Rethinking health innovation

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