Market access is a complex and protracted process that pharmaceutical and biotech companies go through in order to ensure their products are made available in as many countries as possible and most importantly that these products are reimbursed and made available to patients who needs them. Due to the development of more and more hi-tech drugs coming to the market, market access has become very important over the last 5-10 years resulting in increasing pressure on healthcare systems and/or governments to cut the costs of their drugs bills. For example, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) plays a key role in the UK market – deciding whether or not new treatments are cost effective. In order for companies to have their products reimbursed at the best price possible by the NHS they must work harder, gather more data around the health economic impact and cost effectiveness of their products and present their data to NICE.

Today market access has become far more challenging due to a number of factors: the increase of competing drugs in the same therapeutic area, the need to contain rising costs, dependence of evidence based medicine and health technology assessment to influence payer decision. In addition, Biosimilar drugs have given payers more choice in deciding what products they will cover.

It has been said that the emerging markets are a key driver of the global pharmaceutical industry’s growth and will be for years to come. IMS Health has predicted that by 2017 they’ll account for one-third of industry sales and still be growing at double-digit rates.

The two-day Market Access, Pricing and Reimbursement 2016 Europe will provide a unique platform for the convergence of stakeholders in the industry to interact, discuss and network with top tier government, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals and non-profit organizations as well as regional and local manufacturers to discuss and share on the macroeconomic factors, policies, issues and drivers that will steer pharmaceutical industry.