International symposium brings insight on healthcare access to Kenan

Experts from across research and industry fields within healthcare gathered May 22 at the Kenan Institute for Ethics for a special symposium, “Access to Medicines: Policy and Practice.”

Hosted by Kenan’s Rethinking Regulation program, about 25 scholars and entrepreneurs took part in discussing topics that addressed the role governments, nonprofits and private entities can play to ensure more people have the ability to care for illnesses – especially due to rising prices and lack of access in developing economies.

Conversation was built around results from the United Nations High Commission’s Special Panel on Access to Medicines, which found that countries must find new approaches to health technology and ensuring access so that all people can benefit from medical advancements.

The event was spearheaded by Kenan’s 2016-17 Lamb Regulatory Fellow, Vishy Pingali,and Julia Barnes-Weise, Executive Director of Global Healthcare Innovation Alliance Accelerator. Experts in attendance work in fields ranging from international intellectual property to public-private global health partnerships and ethics.

According to Pingali, the group found three main issues emerged as a goal for our future work after hearing from economists, legal scholars, public policy experts and practitioners in medicine. Pingali, who presented research on how government regulation can increase access to medicines, was among a dozen speakers who offered insight on topics that ranged from intellectual property and innovation to policy.

“We need to develop business models for better incentivizing parties to make medicines more affordable and create new paradigms to consider healthcare holistically to answer bigger questions around affordable healthcare and pharmaceuticals,” he said. “We need to have robust public policy frameworks for policy making in this space.”