Report Calls for Better Measurement of Access-to-Medicine Programs to Support the World’s Poorest
Pharmaceutical companies have long experience in measuring the impact of their business programs. The same should apply to their access-to-medicine efforts
Novartis invites scrutiny of effort to improve access to medicine
Richard Laing, from the Boston University (BU) School of Public Health and former World Health Organization official, says that many efforts to expand access to medicines fail to gather sufficient evidence on how effective they are. His team at BU recently issued a study highlighting these gaps, and emphasizing the need for companies to better document the impact of their programs.
When Novartis launched its innovative Novartis Access program to supply affordable medicines for chronic diseases to some of the world’s poorest countries, the company asked Laing to do an independent impact evaluation. The team at Boston University has been collaborating with Novartis since the outset, developing a measurement approach which could benefit both Novartis Access as well as other access-to-medicine programs.
Read the interview with Professor Laing on why the independent measurement of access programs is key to their success: https://www.novartis.com/stories/global-impact/novartis-invites-scrutiny-of-effort-to-improve-access-to-medicine
Download the Boston University study in Health Affairs: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/36/4/706
Learn more about Boston University’s measurement methodology for Novartis Access: http://sites.bu.edu/evaluatingaccess-novartisaccess/
