NIH Starts Taking Responsibility for Access
‘Access Planning’ policy is limited, but a needed signal for medicine affordability
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a new policy supporting access to government-owned medical inventions.
The policy requires drugmakers relying on NIH patents to submit ‘access plans’ explaining how they will support affordable access to their product. Public Citizen and allies have long called on NIH to ensure access to taxpayer-supported medical technologies, including during the deadly crisis of global Covid vaccine inequity. Public Citizen commented on the draft policy, participated in NIH forums and recently co-authored an article in Health Affairs calling for NIH to expand the draft policy.
Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Director Peter Maybarduk issued the following statement:
“For the first time in a generation, NIH is starting to take responsibility for access and for making the medicines it helps develop more affordable. This is a breakthrough, however limited, which finally creates an expectation that drugmakers support affordability and broad access to medicine when they rely on government inventions.
“The most effective Covid vaccines relied on NIH technology, including the NIH-Moderna vaccine. Had access planning been in place at the time, Moderna would have had to commit to a plan with NIH for better public access to its vaccine, and the government would have had more ability to influence Moderna’s choices, supporting affordability instead of price spikes and global access instead of vaccine apartheid.
“Still, the policy is anemic in key ways. Drugmakers will decide what access and affordability mean to them. The policy suggests, but does not require, that drugmakers develop global access plans benefiting people in poor countries. This permissiveness is a mistake that could allow needless suffering in the future. NIH should revisit and expand access planning as soon as possible, for example, by applying access conditions to all inventions that taxpayers fund and not only those that taxpayers own. This expansion would touch more medicines and benefit many more people.
“NIH is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research and development. It has untapped power to help ensure medicines are more affordable for millions of people who need them before those medicines even reach the market.
“We measure progress in steps. NIH’s step forward will be noted by other research and development funders worldwide. Now, if pharma relies on taxpayer technology, at least it must make a plan for taxpayer access.”