Filenews 17 February 2023 - by Marilena Panayi
25 innovative treatments have received the necessary approvals for their integration into the General Health System, while the HIO has promoted the procedures for the inclusion of another, at least 20 drugs, within the next few weeks.
The 25 treatments that have already been approved concern thousands of chronic patients with multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, other rare autoimmune diseases and eosinophilic asthma.
Based on the new procedures applied by the HIO, these treatments, which until now were mostly administered to patients through the Nominal Requests Committee of the Ministry of Health, are automatically included in the GHS, since their importing companies have given a positive response to a relevant proposal they have received from the Health Insurance Organization and some of them, They even completed the process of signing the necessary documents.
The HIO, from December 1st until now, and based on the extraordinary procedures it implements in order for innovative medicines to be integrated into the GHS, has sent letters with a financial proposal to importers and representatives for the immediate integration of the treatments they now have through the EDA into the System.
A total of 66 letters were sent. In 25, the companies responded positively and these are the treatments promoted for inclusion in the GHS, in 36 cases the companies asked for time to study the data and then give their answer, while in five cases, the answer was negative.
Another 20 letters / proposals have been prepared and are expected to be sent to the companies in the next few weeks while the Organization continues the process of preparing the relevant protocols and other proposals for the rest, out of the 126 innovative drugs that are currently administered to patients through the Ministry of Health and it has been decided that they will be included in the GHS.
Speaking to "F", the competent officer of the HIO, Panagiotis Petrou, explained that, "usually the time it takes for pharmaceutical companies to respond to such proposals is much longer and that is why it is very important that to date, we have received this number of responses".
