Angels and Demons

I recently participated in the 9^th France/USA AGIPHARM Conference.  This year’s event was held in Geneva at the Globe of Science and Innovation, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).  CERN is best known these days as the location of the particle accelerator used for the creation of the fictional “antimatter bomb” featured in Angels and Demons.

 There were no angels or demons – but there was a fair amount of intellectual acceleration.  Here are a few highlights:

* Edouard Croufer (Director, Healthcare & Chemical Practice, Arthur D. Little), declared that the pharmaceutical industry needed a new model – that Pharma needs to move from “find a molecule and market it” to “identify a need and find a solution.”  When I pointed out to him that the latter was precisely what the industry is currently doing, he … agreed!  Nothing like having the strength of yor convictions. As Henri Poincaré said, “To doubt everything, or, to believe everything, are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." Croufer also pointed out that 21^st success for medicines would be realized through “speed and intensity.” Amen.

* Francois Meyer (Director, Haute Autorité De Santé) made a rather revolutionary statement for the head of a national reimbursement authority when he stated that “we must move beyond clinical trials” to make true 21^st century healthcare technology assessments.  He also spoke to the need to include outcomes data in reimbursement decisions – or rather in the revisiting of  already-decided reimbursement decisions.  Or as he put it, “comparative efficacy in real life.” Heady stuff.

* Relative to the development of public/private partnerships, Patrice Jaillon (President of GIP CENGEPS – the French National Trial Management Center for Healthcare Products) called for a “climate of confidence and trust.”

* All well and good until Noel Renaudin (President of the CEM – the comité économique du medicament), the Grand Fromage of healthcare reimbursement in France, remarked that the CEM needed to keep industry “on a short leash.”

Particle accelerators are, after all, about high-speed collisions.