The Spanish Federation of Health Technology Companies (Fenin) has welcome positively the approval by the Council of Ministers of the draft Law on Medicines and Health Products, a regulation that now begins its parliamentary journey and which, in the opinion of the employers' association in a press release it has made public today, represents a step forward to adapt the regulatory framework of health technology to the new needs of the National Health System (SNS).
The organization considers that the text incorporates a good part "of the demands that the sector has been raising over the last few years and that can contribute to strengthening the competitiveness of companies, favor new investments in Spain, and accelerate the incorporation of technological innovation into healthcare."
The draft law, promoted by the Ministry of Health, constitutes one of the most ambitious reforms of the pharmaceutical framework and health products in recent decades. Among its objectives is to adapt Spanish regulations to European legislation, modernize access and financing procedures, strengthen safety and quality guarantees for medicines and health products, and introduce measures that favor a more efficient use of public resources. The regulation also dedicates, for the first time, a specific space to health products, recognizing their regulatory particularities and their growing weight in an increasingly digitized healthcare system.
In this context, Fenin particularly highlights that the project promotes a public procurement model "based on value" and not exclusively on price. The federation believes that giving greater weight to quality criteria in acquisition processes will allow for the incorporation of more innovative technologies, improve diagnoses and treatments, and increase the efficiency of the healthcare system.
The employers' association also values the Government's commitment to develop a Protech Plan, an initiative aimed at boosting the national health technology industry by supporting companies that invest in Spain, promoting research and development, and contributing to strengthening the strategic autonomy of the country in an area considered key for the future of healthcare.
Likewise, Fenin thanks the dialogue maintained with the Ministry of Health during the drafting of the legislative text. According to its criteria, the project recognizes the particularities of the healthcare technology sector and establishes a specific regulatory framework that will allow better exploitation of the potential of these technologies from both a healthcare and industrial perspective.
Indexing as a priority
However, the federation believes that the parliamentary process offers room to introduce improvements: among them, it places as a priority the updating of public contracts through indexing mechanisms to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure that, it argues, would help ensure the economic sustainability of the supplying companies and guarantee access for patients and healthcare professionals to cutting-edge technologies. This was emphasized by the Secretary General of Fenin in this recent interview in Demócrata.
With the opening of the parliamentary phase, Fenin has shown its willingness to collaborate with the different political groups to incorporate amendments that strengthen the impact of the sector both on healthcare quality and on industrial capacity, the creation of qualified jobs, and the economic development of the country.