The EURIPID Collaboration held its annual meeting of the Board of Participants (BoP) in Brussels on 4-5^th June 2024. A total of representatives of 19 BoP members gathered at the Belgian Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (RIZIV INAMI). At the BoP meeting, besides the update on current matters of EURIPID and the presentation of analysis that can be done with EURIPID data, the focus of the meeting was to define how EURIPID can be further improved, compromising data utilisation for internal use and data access for external users. The BoP meeting was followed by the EURIPID ACCESS project meeting on the 6^th June. At that meeting, project partners mainly discussed current and upcoming tasks and associated challenges.

On 25 and 26 April 2024 the 5th PPRI Conference of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Pharmaceutical Pricing and Reimbursement Policies was held at the Palais Niederösterreich in Vienna. More than 250 participants from more than 40 countries discussed about burning challenges related to equitable and affordable access to medicines worldwide (https://ppri.goeg.at/news1). On the second day of the conference, the EURIPID Collaboration organised a workshop about „How the Euripid collaboration contributes to improving access to biosimilars“. The workshop was moderated by Claudia Habl who serves as Secretary of the Board of Participants (BoP) of the EURIPID collaboration. In her welcoming address she set the framework on Biosimilars, policies to encourage their uptake and remaining challenges regarding access to biosimilar medicines.

The first keynote was given by Gergely Németh from the Hungarian National Health Insurance Fund (NEAK) and project manager of EURIPID, who introduced the EURIPID collaboration to the participants of the workshop. He emphasised the data content of the EURIPID database and the possibility for researchers to apply for data extracts. Mr. Németh concluded his presentation with an outlook on the expected outcome of current activities like the EC grant „EURIPID access“ or involvement in the WHO-EURO Access to Novel Medicines Platform.

In the second keynote, Matjaž Marc from Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices of the Slovenian Republic (JAZMP) talked about the „Impact of market entries of biosimilars in Slovenia“, a policy brief produced under the current EC grant. The analysis aimed to demonstrate the capabilities of information in the EURIPID database and which research questions could be answered with this data. The results pointed that in European countries considerable difference in the minimum wholesale unit price of the original (i.e. reference product) and biosimilar medicines remains. Compared to other European countries, the number products containing adalimumab available on the Slovenian market is comparably high. Furthermore, The overall annual expenditure on adalimumab-containing biologicals has been reduced since biosimilars‘ market entry at the end of 2018 due to reduction of the price of the original product and increased utilisation of cheaper biosimilars.

The last part of the workshop contained a high-quality panel discussion in which following experts additionally joined the podium: Liese Barbier (KU Leuven / European Medicines Agency), Dorthe Bartels (AMGROS), Francis Arickx (RIZIV-INAMI) and Frode Hellesnes (Biogen). After a brief introduction of themselves, all six speakers (key note speakers and panelists) discussed about several topics regarding biosimilar. If currenty regulatory approval procedures are deemed sufficient and if panelists would need more support by regulators. Measures to encourage the uptake of biosimilars and open points regarding prescribing requirements or compulsory substitution. The takeaway messages of the panelists were:

• To capture the benefits of biosimilar competition for patients and healthcare systems, not only today but also over future years, we need holistic policy measures, focus on stimulating sustainable competition over the longer term, and collective action across stakeholders
• Important to work close together and use the local/nationale system (competition and tender) to make the best set-up for launch biosimilar in the market. Quick uptake of biosimilar means great savings for payers, while at the same time more patients are in treatment
• Biosimilars are not necessarily Best Value Biologicals
• The biosimilar void and product supply has become a major future challenge. We are at a crossroad, if we want to take advantage of the opportunities future biosimilars represents we need to improve the market framework in many countries. History demonstrate that free competitions (e.g. tenders & contracts developed in close cooperation between buyer and sellers) works and strict regulations do not.

On 19 October 2023 the EURIPID collaboration held its annual Meeting of the Board of Participants (BoP). EURIPID members from 20 countries gathered at the premises of the Polish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tariff System (Agencja Oceny Technologii Medycznych i Taryfikacji, AOTMiT) in Warsaw. The meeting was facilitated by Momir Radulović, the Director of the Slovenian Medicines Agency (JAZMP) who is currently the elected chair of the EURIPID’s BoP. The welcoming speaches by Maciej Miłkowski (Deputy Minister at the Polish Ministry of Health), Roman Topór-Mądry (President of AOTMiT) and Laure Geslin (European Commission) emphasised that EURIPID is a very successful project and within the European Union (EU) a best practice example of a member-state driven initiative. Furthermore, the speakers highleted EURIPID’s contribution to ensure that patients have access to affordable medicines and that health systems remain financially sustainable. During the meeting participants were informed by the project manager Gergely Néméth about the current state of play of the EURIPID collaboration.

This year, Croatia and Malta joined the EURIPID collaboration, raising the number of participating countries to 28. Furthermore, the BoP has also approved the participation of Romania.

A major part of discussions at this year’s BoP meeting was reserved for the future of EURIPID. When EURIPID started more than 10 years ago national competent authorities on pricing and reimbursement of pharmaceuticals faced different challenges than today. Therefore, EURIPID members initiated at the last BoP meeting 2022 in Oslo a process of getting EURIPID ready for the future and its challenges. An important part of this development will be covered by the current EC grant EURIPID ACCESS which aims to analyse options and to develop early warning mechanisms in the EURIPID website and database to detect excessive pricing. The major guiding principle for EURIPID’s further development will be to turn information into knowledge and how public institutions in the field of pricing and reimbursement of medicines can benefit from it.

On 14 February 2023 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a health working paper on “Exploring the feasibility of monitoring access to novel medicine“. The OECD undertook a pilot study in EU Member States that aimed to determine the utility and feasibility of routine, cross-national monitoring of access to medicines across multiple dimensions. The researchers applied a mix of methods to explore how the various dimensions of access could be monitored systematically with routine  data. Since the EURIPID collaboration is committed to enhanced collaboration with international organisations, EURIPID provided aggregated data for the analysis by OECD health experts. The published working paper presents key learnings from the desk review and country survey to which 21 EU Member States responded, with a focus on exploring the utility and feasibility of the processes of monitoring and measurement. The report acknowledged EURIPID’s current efforts in routine data collection and emphasised EURIPID’s potential for monitoring several dimensions of access if it is able to collate more public information in different areas and is able to extend its scope.

The annual BoP meeting took place on 21st September 2021. DG SANTE presented insights of the European Pharma Strategy, AIFA gave an overview of the publication „Medicine price transparency and confidential managed-entry agreements in Europe: findings from the EURIPID survey. In: Health Policy, 125;9 (2021)“ and the Austrian National Public Health Institute gave some useful inputs regarding the feasibility on the potential integration of Medical Devices into the EURIPID website. Also, elections to the Executive Board took place.