On 10 December 2024, the Spanish Government officially unveiled the Pharmaceutical Industry Strategy 2024-2028 ("the Strategy"), a comprehensive roadmap designed to strengthen the sector, ensuring access to quality medicines, fostering innovation, and maintaining the sustainability of the healthcare system. As part of Spain’s Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan, the Strategy also aligns with the European Pharmaceutical Strategy. It aims to address unmet medical needs while safeguarding the National Health System (SNS), promote ongoing research and development to support new therapies and global competitiveness, and ensure the sector’s resilience through a sustainable and competitive supply chain.

This Strategy was developed by an interministerial working group, which included Spain's Ministries of Health, Finance, Industry and Tourism, and Science, Innovation, alongside universities and key pharmaceutical industry associations such as Farmaindustria, AESEG, BioSim, AFAQUIM, and ASEBIO.

Accordingly, through a network-based approach, the strategy highlights the interconnectedness of innovation, production, and access to medicines, encouraging collaboration between the government, regional authorities, healthcare professionals, patients, and the pharmaceutical industry. 

Key measures

The Strategy outlines several critical initiatives, including:

• Health Technology Assessment (HTA): Establishing systems for the assessment of health technologies and streamlining the financing and pricing processes for medicines.
• Promotion of Generic and Biosimilar Medicines: Encouraging the use of these medicines to improve accessibility and reduce healthcare costs.
• Investment in Clinical and Pre-clinical Research: Increasing funding and reinforcing support structures for R&D to maintain Spain's leadership in the field.
• Strategic Autonomy: Strengthening regulation and ensuring that Spain's pharmaceutical industry can operate independently and sustainably within the global supply chain.
• Strategic Governance and Public-Private Collaboration: including a robust governance framework to foster collaboration between public and private stakeholders, featuring an Interministerial Monitoring Committee to oversee execution, a Mixed Public-Private Committee to facilitate cooperation between the public sector and the pharmaceutical industry, and The Alliance for the Strategy, a collaborative space for key actors to work together towards the strategy’s goals.

Conclusion

As the fourth-largest pharmaceutical market in the EU, with over 270,000 people employed and strong investments in R&D, Spain is well-positioned to enhance its role in global pharmaceutical innovation, access to medicines, and healthcare sustainability. The Pharmaceutical Industry Strategy 2024-2028 is a vital step in this direction.

Authors 

Elisa Lorenzo, Daniela Mejia and Violeta García-Loygorri