Quantify’s Douglas Knutsson was interviewed by Life-time for having mapped the availability of 116 new medicines approved by the EMA in 2017-2019, on behalf of Lif – de forskande läkemedelsföretagen. The study covered not only the rate of availability and time to market but also factors affecting these parameters, an assessment of replaceability of non-available medicines and characteristics of medicines that were neither available nor replaceable. This year’s report was especially focused on orphan medicines.
A majority of new medicines approved are available in Sweden but with 33% of medicines being neither available nor replaceable, there is potential value lost to patients. The most common reason for a medicine not to be available was that it was not marketed in Sweden; this raises questions regarding Sweden’s attractiveness as an early launch country and whether quicker and easier processes might attract more companies to improve the availability of new medicines in Sweden. You can read the article (in Swedish) here.