Activities

Since its beginning as technical undertaking the EURIPID Collaboration has evolved to be an important player in the field of pricing of medicinal products in Europe and is globally the most advanced pricing database available for the national competent authorities for pricing and reimbursement of medicinal products.

In April 2019, the EURIPID collaboration established a Stakeholder Dialogue Platform for actors in the field of pharmaceutical pricing. Please find information on the activities via the health policy platform below and here.

Enhancing transparency

The members of the EURIPID Collaboration are convinced that transparency is a mean by which patients’ access to medicines can be improved.

The EURIPID project is engaged in improving transparency since its start. Transparency faces the prisoner’s dilemma, namely that the more transparent countries can be worse off than the less transparent countries therefore EURIPID suggests a step wise approach in increasing transparency both in geographic and sectoral sense. In the first step the pricing information should be available for the experts of those European national competent authorities who share the same understanding on the main issues of pricing of medicinal products and who are formal members of the EURIPID Collaboration and share their pricing information in exchange to get access to the information of the others. As the next step the EURIPID Collaboration established contact to the stakeholders of the pharmaceutical sector to investigate the options for broadening the access to the information stored in the EURIPID database.

Transparency also means that the important aspects of pricing should be taken into account therefore the data content of the EURIPID database was extended to price information of non-reimbursed products and information on sales volumes and the existence of managed entry agreements.

What concrete actions are taken by EURIPID to enhance transparency?

EURIPID participates in the discussions of the new EU Pharma Strategy to translate its knowledge and experience on pharmaceutical pricing into further concrete actions,
EURIPID works together with the stakeholders of the pharmaceutical sector to find ways for increasing transparency in the EURIPID Stakeholder Dialogue Platform,
EURIPID would like to work together with OECD in achieving its goals regarding transparency by policy dialogue, joint analysis and information sharing,
EURIPID would like to work together with WHO to help the implementation of the WHA Resolution on transparency of pricing by sharing its experiences and information,
EURIPID is in exchange with the European Medicines Agency with regard to standardisation and the Article 57 database.

Data provision

The main activity of the EURIPID Collaboration is the provision of data related to the pricing of medicinal products to the experts of the national competent authorities of the participating countries. The information content includes prices of reimbursed and non-reimbursed medicinal products; sales volumes in the out-patient segment and information on the existence of managed entry agreements. The information is provided in a uniform standard structure. Price information is timely updated by the project team in line with national up-date frequencies.

Information from the EURIPID database can also be available for researchers from the academic sector in line with the procedure for data requests. (See details in Get involved/Researchers)

Achivements in the first decade 2010-2020

The EURIPID Collaboration was founded as a voluntary, non-profit collaboration of European pricing and reimbursement authorities for the mutual sharing of information regarding pharmaceutical pricing policies and pricing of medicinal products. Since its beginnings in 2009 it has grown in size and now consists of members from 26 countries, associated partners and the European Commission. The document „Ensuring added value of EURIPID to the European Commission, Member States and European citizens“ was prepared by the Executive Committee to outline EURIPID’s achievements as well as identify areas of future development.

Achievements of EURIPID are diverse: An essential part of the project is the 24-hour available database with constantly updated price information as the most comprehensive source for publicly available price records (over 30 million data points) and its targeted services for users (e.g. background information on national pricing systems). The quality of the database is ensured through continuous data validation and standardisation is performed using tailored standard operating procedures for each country.

Another field in which the EURIPID collaboration is very active is evidence generation in the field of pricing and reimbursement. EURIPID and National Competent Authorities on Pricing and Reimbursement (NCAPR) jointly developed a Technical Guidance on External Reference Pricing. Additionally, EURIPID is engaged in various research activities such as for example the calculation of Purchasing Power Parities for medicinal products together with Eurostat.

An important pillar of EURIPID’s work is building a network and capacity building both among the members of the collaboration and beyond through the Stakeholder Dialogue Platform as well as cooperation with major international organisations (e.g. OECD, planned with WHO).

The collaboration is constantly evolving and has performed a problem analysis to identify room for improvement. These lie in the areas of information in the database, usage of the database, voluntary nature of data sharing.

The present document describes the abovementioned points in detail.

Webinars

The EURIPID Collaboration organised webinars since the beginning of 2022.

EU Grants

The EURIPID collaboration has been awarded following grants:

EU4H-2022-PJ-08: HS-g122-17.01
HP-PJ-2018: Grant Agreement number 826652
HP-PJ-2014: Grant Agreement number 664317
Framework Partnership Agreement Number GWP 2009 – ENT/IMA/1.1.10.3.8

Dialogue

In 2019, the EURIPID collaboration established the EURIPID Stakeholder Dialogue Platform in order to establish a sustainable cross-functional cooperation on information exchange in the field of pricing of medicinal products in Europe with the stakeholders of the pharmaceutical sector and supranational organisations.

The key objectives of the Stakeholder Dialogue Platform are

To establish a sustainable cooperation on information exchange in the field of medicinal product pricing via the discussion of opportunities and challenges of such a cooperation.
To further enhance the current functioning of the EURIPID database.
To monitor the implementation of the EURIPID Technical Guidance Document on external reference pricing (ERP) of medicinal products.
To contribute in making transparent prices of medicinal products better work in practice.
To investigate suitable methods to measure patients’ access to medicinal products in Europe by using the potential of the EURIPID database and website.

The main target group of the Dialogue Platform are the previous members of the Platform on Access to Medicines in Europe and other stakeholder organisations, particularly patient/consumer representatives, organisations like WHO and OECD, who will be invited to take part in the creation of a strategic cooperation in the field of pricing of medicinal products.

The group jointly selects the topics in the field of medicines that shall be discussed in meetings of the platform (incl. a prioritisation of these topics). The participation in the Platform is open to everybody from the target group on a strictly voluntary basis. The main intention is to have a space for open and non-binding discussions.

The following working groups were set up in the course of the first Stakeholder Dialogue Platform:

Transparency Working Group
EPR Monitoring Working Group
Patients’ Access Working Group

The Stakeholder Dialogue Platform takes place once a year. If you want to obtain more information on the Stakeholder Dialogue Platform or the next meeting, please contact the EURIPID collaboration euripid@neak.gov.hu.

Click here for information on previous meetings and the joint concept note and mandate.

Knowledge and Information Dissemination

Members of the EURIPID team held presentations at several meetings throughout Europe.

Competent Authorities on Pricing and Reimbursement (CAPR):The network of CAPR is an offshoot of the Pharmaceutical Forum (2005-2008) and has been installed during the Slovenian Presidency in 2008. It is a platform offering the opportunity to identify, share and discuss information, expertise and best practices/best policies with other Member States on high level issues in the field of pricing and reimbursement of pharmaceuticals. Under the Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe this group has been relaunched as part of the Commission flagship initiatives on affordability and in particular to develop cooperation in a group of competent authorities, based on mutual learning and best-practice exchange on pricing, payment and procurement policies, to improve the affordability and cost-effectiveness of medicines and health systems’s sustainability, including on cancer treatment – 2021-2024. More information here. Since 2023 the EURIPID collaboration is a regular member of CAPR.

Pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement information (PPRI): It describes the thematic focus of the Pharmacoeconomics Department and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Pharmaceutical Pricing and Reimbursement Policies. More specifically, it is the name of one of the department’s flagship projects: the PPRI network. PPRI relates to networks of competent authorities for pricing and reimbursement, as well as to the activities done by the Austrian National Public Health Institute GÖG which maintains the PPRI network and serves as PPRI secretariat.

Commission Expert Group on Safe and Timely Access to Medicines for Patients (“STAMP”): The STAMP expert group is set up to provide advice and expertise to the Commission services in relation to the implementation of the EU Pharmaceutical legislation, as well as programms and policies in this field. The STAMP will exchange views and information about the experience of Member States, examine national initiatives and identify ways to use more effectively the existing EU regulatory tools with the aim to further improve safe and timely access and availability of medicines for patients.

The EURIPID Collaboration prepared and published its Technical Guidance Document on External Reference Pricing.

The EURIPID collaboration is currently funded by an annual contribution fee of the participants and – for defined tasks and deliverables – a grant of the EU.

This website is part of the project ’826652 Euripid’ which is co-funded by the European Union’s Health Programme (2014-2020).

The content of this website represents the views of the author only and is his/her sole responsibility; it cannot be considered to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency (CHAFEA) or any other body of the European Union. The European Commission and the Agency do not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.