Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008 - (Page 32)

With major projects in the pipeline, will you still be focusing on the aforementioned therapeutic classes? We are not planning to change our category focus or exit from any of them. The strategy is to cover the entire market with those categories and also with our business models. With innovative pharmaceuticals in the core, we are also one of the leaders in generics and consumer health products. essential to have a strong portfolio to share our risks in different areas. With the EU harmonisation efforts, are you anticipating any changes and consistency in health regulations in coming years? Although we have hopes for EU participation, we don’t include this scenario in our five-year plan. For the regulatory parts of product registration and pricing Turkey is already very close to EU. With the collaborative and ongoing efforts of government and industry, we will be even closer to their registration, reimbursement and pricing processes, which are three important areas. All transitions require some time. For the last five years the main focus for Turkey was registration and also pricing, and some improvements undertaken in those areas. Since 2006, the new focus area has been the reimbursement process. Criteria setting and transparency are key parameters. How much does a diverse portfolio for covering all business models play into a strategy of offsetting potential market failures? Patients continue to want better medicines with better efficacy and fewer side effects. Patients also need protection against preventable diseases, affordable treatment options and consumer healthcare products. We have a broad healthcare portfolio addressing changing healthcare needs. It’s true that we are players in a very risky sector, making vast investments, effort and time in research and development. We have 10000 molecules under experimentation and only a few will be successful and put into the market. With the costs associated with those molecules, it is Combined with Sandoz, Novartis had the largest turnover in 2007 among pharma companies in Turkey, with sales eclipsing $700 billion. What kind of growth do you expect for 2008 and what is your vision for Novartis Turkey in the next five years? Normally we are expecting the market’s growth, 8–10%. We want to continue our leadership position. For the next 5 years, we aim to introduce innovative products for patients to prolong their life and to increase their quality of life. Of those three processes, executives at multinationals have cited registration as the most problematic for Turkey. Has it been the same for Novartis? Currently, the average registration lead time is longer than the 210 days that have been defined by EU and local authorities. We feel this period should especially be shorter for life-saving products such as orphan drugs. We believe in the need for an accelerated registration process for public health. 37 Last words Who said what in pharma’s last four weeks 3 News The monthly round-up of European stories 6 Calendar Upcoming events in Europe and around the world 7 BioFutures Gerhard Symons on the dark side of Russian healthcare

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008 Contents News and Analysis Calendar BioFutures Strategy Fundamentals Executive Recruitment: Small Company, Big Career Executive Recruitment: Instant Pharma Named Patient Programmes Executive Review: Turkey

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.