Making medicines sustainable

Healthcare ’s sustainability record to date leaves much to be desired. The sector contributes 4.4% of total global emissions, healthcare costs continue to rise, and waste is rife. At the same time, two billion people lack access to even basic healthcare.  These are big problems but there is one way to act on them at scale that will be a win for patients, care providers, taxpayers and pharma.  Medicines waste is the problem and cutting it is the aim of the Sustainable Medicines Partnership, a body which is about to launch a new four-year programme to find solutions that will work at scale.Its director is Nazneen Rahman, who is also the founder of YewMaker, an innovation incubator with a mission to build, test and scale sustainable healthcare solutions, as well as a molecular genetics researcher and former professor of human genetics at the Institute of Cancer Research.  A big part of the challenge in tackling waste is that the issue lies across such a wide swath of the healthcare sector, says Rahman. Different bits of the healthcare system work in silos and so cannot effect the system-wide change needed.Trying to drive change in this highly-complex, highly-regulated system replete with competing incentives and interlocking commercial and not-for-profit organisations, therefore requires concerted, industry-wide action to drive change, she says. “The challenge of systemic change is hard but if you get in at the foundational levels the scale of the impact can be extraordin...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news