Sanofi has a longstanding commitment to collaborating with healthcare systems worldwide to ensure our treatments remain accessible and affordable for patients who need them most. We deeply understand and share the concerns surrounding medicine affordability, and we actively encourage countries to optimize the value they derive from healthcare investments.
While we recognize the critical importance of addressing healthcare costs, we believe that creating sustainable, affordable healthcare solutions requires a collaborative approach involving all stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem.
This is why, we published our Global Access & Pricing Principles. They apply to our three Global Business Units, i.e. Specialty Care, Vaccines and General Medicines and are built on two fundamental pillars designed to foster sustainable access to innovation and incentivize future scientific progress:
1. Clear rational for pricing & access
When we set the price of a new medicine, we hold ourselves to a rigorous and structured process that includes consultation with external stakeholders and considers the following factors:
- holistic values assessment:
- clinical value: the therapeutic benefit our medicines provide to patients, and their advantages over existing standard of care,
- economic value: the reduction in disease burden and associated healthcare costs through decreased need for additional medical interventions.
- social and wellbeing value: the positive impact of our medicines on patient of life and productivity
Our assessments rely on a range of internal and external methodologies, including health technology assessment (HTA) and other analyses that help define or quantify value and include patient perspectives and priorities.
- availability or anticipation of similar treatments at the time of launch: we review similar current or future treatment options at the time of launch to understand the landscape within the disease areas in which our medicine or vaccines may be used.
- affordability assessment: Systematically evaluating each country's relative ability to pay for new medicines.
- unique factors specific to the medicine or vaccine at the time of launch there may be factors specific to a medicine or vaccine at the time of launch. For example, we may need to support ongoing clinical trials to reinforce the value of our medicines (e.g. longer-term outcomes studies), implement important regulatory commitments, or develop patient support tools aiming at improving disease management and reducing the overall burden of care.
- Consideration of sustainable access to innovation, including support for continued investment in R&D and equitable access across markets
2. Inclusion of affordability criteria into pricing considerations for new launches
For all new product launches, we factor in country affordability (ability to pay) using indicators published every year by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
We specifically look at :
- country wealth (GDP per capita and growth rate);
- healthcare system ability to pay (public health spending); and
- the burden of health cost on individuals (individual contribution to health care expenditures).
We use these criteria to determine our net price flexibility for the country. Wealthier nations have a pivotal role to play in fostering continued innovation by adopting policies that recognize and reward the transformative value of improving patients' lives. In applying affordability criteria, we aim to create pricing frameworks that not only reflect current economic realities but also safeguard the ability to reinvest in research that delivers future breakthroughs for patients worldwide
When it comes to sustainable and equitable access to healthcare in vulnerable and underserved populations, barriers to access are deeper than price alone. Among the multiple gaps, insufficient awareness, limited access to diagnostic tools, inadequate healthcare capacity and capabilities, sub-optimal ‘last mile’ distribution, and other social and political determinants remain crucial issues for access to healthcare. We are working closely with global and local health authorities and partners to develop comprehensive care solutions, including the provision of high-quality vaccines and medicines at adjusted prices according to country specifics and needs.