priority Medicines for Europe and the World: 2013 update

The 2013 Report Priority Medicines for Europe and the World provides a public-healthbasedmedicines development agenda, based on a systematic methodology for thispriority setting. It is an update to the original 2004 Report Priority Medicines for Europeand the World and takes into account changes in global health and pharmaceuticalinnovation since 2004 in order to better address current and future patient needs.This latest updated report analyses pharmaceutical innovation from a global publichealth perspective for Europe and the world, based on the principles of equity andefficiency. For this analysis, four inter-related criteria have been applied to determinepriority disease areas of research:Criterion 1: The estimated European and global burdens of disease;Criterion 2: The common risk factors amenable to pharmacological interventionthat have an impact on many high-burden diseases;Criterion 3: The prediction of disease burden trends, based on epidemiologicaland demographic changes in Europe and the world;Criterion 4: The principle of ?social solidarity? applied to diseases for whichthere are currently no market incentives to develop treatments.Pharmaceutical ?gaps? have been established for the diseases and risk factorsidentified. A gap exists for a disease or condition when: pharmaceutical treatments forthat condition will soon become ineffective (e.g. due to resistance); the deliverymechanism or formulation is not appropriate for the target patient group; or when aneffective medicine either does not exist or is not sufficiently effective (e.g. lack of basicscientific knowledge or lack of financial incentive due to market failure).Within the context of identifying the pharmaceutical gaps which have an impact on thehealth of people in Europe, particular emphasis has been placed on identifying thoseresearch needs which are also relevant for the rest of the world. This "commonality ofinterest" is an important bridging aspect of the project between Europe and the worldfor both the 2004 Report and the updated 2013 Report.In identifying priorities for pharmaceutical research for 2014 to 2020, data from theWorld Health Organization (WHO) Global Burden of Disease Database in Geneva andthe Institute of Health Metrics in the United States were used to identify the mostrelevant diseases with the highest burden of disease, as well as the most relevant riskfactors in Europe and the world. Information on predicted public health threats wasobtained from the WHO, the EU and other official sources.