Institutions and businesses together to innovate

3. commitment to personalized medicine, advanced therapies, rare diseases, combinations of technologies to manage comorbidities or chronicity.

The second is life expectancy which in 2023 in Italy increased by six months and returned to pre-Covid levels. A result achieved thanks to the synergy between innovation and commitment of institutions, healthcare professionals and companies.

The third is patent applications in the Life Sciences, an area in which Italy has grown by 32% in the last five years, more than the EU average (15%) and other sectors at national level (16%). Innovation runs fast and integrates technology and skills, through the digital revolution and Artificial Intelligence, up to Research in space. A holistic approach – underlined by the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci – which uses all the tools available and leads to increasingly significant results to improve health, prevention, appropriateness and planning. A common commitment also to address urgent health challenges such as, for example, the development of innovative antibiotics. With an evolution that will also concern the pharmaceutical industry, as a fundamental hub of an interconnected Life Sciences system between research, manufacturing, training, services, Big Data analysis, National Health Service.

It therefore becomes a priority to accelerate the review of governance and policy models. The watchword today is to attract investments from companies in a competitive context to respond to international competition and the sharp increases in the costs of all raw materials. Only in this way will it be possible to guarantee the quality of care and the sustainability of the system. An example of this is clinical research, which allows citizens access to new therapies, generates savings for the NHS and increases the skills of health workers: a value to be increased with an attractive context. In a profoundly changed world, with extremely complex challenges, it is essential to plan the future together to make it better: for this reason the comparison between Institutions and Industry is decisive. A partnership that is essential to abandon an ideological and anti-industrial approach, which has characterized EU policies in recent years. And at the same time to truly protect citizens’ health, improve access to treatment and guarantee the competitiveness of pharmaceutical companies. In Italy we breathe a different air compared to the EU. The Government has repeatedly demonstrated that it considers our sector strategic. We are aware, as underlined by the Prime Minister, that «today our main challenge, the one that anticipates and brings together all the others, is exactly this: to go back to thinking big, to go back to believing in ourselves, in our talent, in our energies ».

We have always believed it. And we will continue to believe it.