Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: Rising prices, budgetary pressures, and the complexity of novel medicines challenge timely, equitable, and sustainable access across the WHO European Region. Recognizing that these challenges call for joint action across public and private sectors, WHO/Europe built on the Oslo Medicines Initiative (2020-2022) to establish the Access to Novel Medicines Platform (NMP) in 2022 - a WHO-convened regional forum for collaboration between governments, industry, and other stakeholders to address access challenges for novel medicines. This paper reports the NMP's evolution, Phase 1 outputs, and the development of the European Access Dialogue Platform (EADP).
METHODS: The NMP brings together 52 Member States, 49 non-State actors including patient organizations, pharmaceutical industry associations, NGOs, and WHO partner organizations. Phase 1 focused on four thematic areas: transparency, solidarity, sustainability, and novel antimicrobials. Multistakeholder working groups, chaired by Member States, produced ten prioritized collaborative project proposals. Governance evolved into a consolidated NMP Steering Committee, chaired by three Member States, providing strategic oversight, supported by the WHO NMP Secretariat for coordination and implementation of NMP activities.
RESULTS: Phase 1 demonstrated the NMP's ability to jointly generate actionable outputs, including a policy framework on managed entry agreements, insights on horizon scanning, and evidence reviews on antibiotic access challenges. The EADP was identified as a key next-phase initiative and launched in June 2026 as a voluntary, inclusive forum for structured, non-product-specific dialogue on access challenges for novel medicines addressing unmet needs, facilitating cross-country learning and collaborative solutions while ensuring neutrality, transparency, balanced participation, and compliance with competition rules.
CONCLUSIONS: The EADP extends the NMP's collaborative model into structured regional dialogue, providing a unique WHO-convened space where Member States, non-State actors including industry, and partner organizations jointly address access barriers to improve timely patient access to novel medicines across the WHO European Region.