An OHE webinar discussing the different roles of unmet need along the development pathway and how its application might be improved.

An OHE webinar discussing the different roles of unmet need along the development pathway and how its application might be improved

The concept of unmet medical need is central to pharmaceutical development, including in informing public and private investment decisions and in societal assessments of the value of innovative medicines. However, how this critical concept is understood and operationalised is often inconsistent across different points of the development pathway and between different stakeholders, including developers, regulators and payers, clinicians, and patients.

Please join our panel as they describe the role of unmet need at specific points in the development pathway and discuss outstanding challenges to its use in promoting innovation in areas of genuine health need. These challenges include:

• Balancing incentives for development in all areas of health need vs restricting incentives to the most pressing needs
• Balancing consistency and transparency in consideration of unmet needs with a recognition of the qualitative circumstances of each condition
• Balancing the needs in rare diseases alongside needs in more prevalent conditions
• Balancing patient and clinical perceptions of unmet needs against regulatory and payer perceptions