Health, Lorenzin: “Allocated resources to ensure access to innovative therapies”

There is a structural underfunding of expenditure for direct purchases, only partially reduced by the creation of funds for innovative drugs and by the revision of the expenditure ceilings introduced with the Budget Law 2021. Another example of a structural limit is represented by the approval process of new drugs. These, when approved at the EMA level, are made available to Italian patients many months later because they are subject to a double approval step, an evaluation by Aifa (418 days on average) and bureaucratic steps at the regional level. The effect produced by these delays is a -19% per capita consumption in Italy compared to the average of the large European countries. This is what emerged during themeeting ‘Innovation in healthcare as a driving force for the country’s economic and social recovery’, organized with the support of the Italian American Pharmaceutical Group (Iapg) and the European and Japanese Group of Farmindustria (EUNIpharma), in which, among others, theformer Minister of Health Beatrice Lorenzin.