Bringing with her over two decades of experience in the pharmaceuticals industry, with positions across the United States and Switzerland, in June 2024 Kavita Patel took over as Managing Director of Roche Hellas, for Greece and Cyprus. In this interview to Business Partners, Kavita talks about the work and goals of Roche Hellas, the importance of R&D and innovation, and the incredible potential of strategic partnerships in strengthening the pharma industry and reshaping healthcare in Greece.
You’ve been with Roche since 2002 and assumed your current role as Managing Director of Roche Hellas for Greece and Cyprus about half a year ago. Looking ahead today, what is your vision for the company?
Through synergies with government and other system partners, we are working to turn challenges into opportunities for a sustainable health system and improved care
At Roche Hellas we have a long tradition of pioneering healthcare, and our vision is to remain leaders in the field of innovation by offering solutions that change patients’ lives. We also aim to form key partnerships within the healthcare ecosystem in order to help shape a more sustainable health system that is financed in a fair, transparent, and evidence based way.
Innovation in healthcare is transforming lives and creating a future where every patient can access the care they need. At the heart of our mission is the belief that innovation has the potential to significantly impact patient outcomes and to improve the quality of healthcare worldwide.
Streamlining processes and increasing incentives are crucial to making Greece an attractive clinical trials destination
At the same time, we must recognize that healthcare and innovative life-changing medicines represent an investment, not a cost to society. In the coming decade, both current and future treatments hold the promise to revolutionize the management of chronic diseases, helping people live better, longer and more productive lives. By prioritizing today’s and tomorrow’s medical advancements, we can create a virtuous cycle of enhanced health, economic growth, and prosperity.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges for the pharma industry in Greece?
The underfunding of the healthcare system is clearly the biggest challenge for our industry in Greece. Innovative medicines specifically, are faced with unsustainable levels of paybacks (clawback and rebates), which jeopardise the very presence of the treatments in the country. Suffice to say that for 2022, the payback level for hospital medicines over €30 reached almost 70%, while for the first half of 2023, the number stands at an unprecedented 83.5%!
Additionally, the introduction of innovative therapies in the country often encounters obstacles such as the ‘5/11 rule’ – a requirement that every new medicine must already be reimbursed in at least five out of 11 specific EU countries before it can be considered for approval in Greece. This ‘rule’ causes unjustified delays in the access of patients in Greece to new treatments, since they often have to wait for considerable time until other countries offer these treatments to their patients first.
Another important challenge for the innovative pharma industry in Greece is that the pharmaceuticals reimbursement process is not based on the value of a medicine. Instead, the level at which a new medicine is reimbursed depends mostly on the level of paybacks of the previous year!
At the same time, the unavailability of secondary health data complicates the landscape, because it prohibits the generation of evidence needed to quantify the value of treatments for patients in the country.
All these factors restrict timely and full patient access to new treatments and set tremendous pressure on pharmaceutical companies and the health ecosystem as a whole.
At Roche Hellas, we believe that the solution lies in the re-design of pharmaceutical policy in a way that places the patient at the centre and allocates resources on the basis of value – clinical, economic and societal. For this reason, we support faster introduction and reimbursement of innovative medicines, underlining their long-term value for patients, the economy and society as a whole. The implementation of the EU Health Technology Assessment Regulation (HTAR) can be a useful tool to improve the evaluation of new treatments and to ensure faster patient access.
Through synergies with government and other system partners, we are working to turn these challenges into opportunities for sustainable and improved care.
How important are private-public partnerships in advancing healthcare and improving patient outcomes? Are there any examples of such partnerships that stand out?
Since I arrived in Greece and deep-dived into the local industry challenges, my team and I have spent hours thinking about how we can collaborate on many levels—across industries, with the State or with our ecosystems partners—to foster positive system change that will help us shape together an environment where people, policymakers and businesses can thrive.
One example is the investment in local healthcare system advancement via private-public partnerships. And I would love to share with you the case of OIKOTHEN as an example.
Due to its challenging geography and its hospital saturation, Greece can benefit greatly from decentralized care. The country has made steps in this direction with OIKOTHEN, a treatment-at-home initiative for oncology patients that was launched by Agios Savvas Oncology Hospital, Greece’s largest public hospital for cancer treatment, and was supported by Roche Hellas. We are immensely proud to have supported the standardization of at-home administration for treatments that were traditionally only available in a hospital setting. The initiative is designed around patient needs and preferences, reducing the stress and inconvenience of hospital visits, while promoting shared decision-making and enhancing hospital efficiency.
OIKOTHEN has since been extended to other hospitals and to people living with multiple sclerosis. It is already being implemented for oncology patients at Agios Savvas Oncology Hospital, Metaxa Cancer Hospital in Piraeus, Theageneio Cancer Hospital of Thessaloniki, and the University Hospital of Alexandroupolis, as well as for multiple sclerosis patients at AHEPA University Hospital in Thessaloniki and the University Hospital of Alexandroupolis.
OIKOTHEN is an example of a truly effective public-private partnership that reflects not only Roche’s commitment to partnering with stakeholders within the healthcare ecosystem in order to enhance the patient experience, but also the incredible potential of such partnerships in transforming healthcare.
Roche is known internationally as a leader in research and development. How does Roche Hellas contribute to this?
In Greece, we systematically invest in research and development to bring the latest treatments to patients. In 2023-2024, we conducted more than 55 clinical trials in over 150 research centers— including Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, and Heraklion—with more than 430 new patients in 60+ research centers. These studies benefit the local scientific community, can create more jobs and make Greece more attractive for continued investment in R&D.
Over the years, Greece has significantly improved its ranking in the EU for clinical trials, with 7,189 trials conducted between 1999 and 2022, but there is still great room for improvement given that 4,000 studies are approved each year in Europe, representing an investment of over €44 billion annually, with Greece absorbing less than €100 million. By increasing the number of clinical trials, we are supporting Greece’s emergence as a key country in the field, capable of attracting a lot more investments while simultaneously increasing the value for patients, healthcare professionals, and society as a whole.
Crucially, in order to make Greece an attractive clinical trials destination, it is essential to streamline processes and increase incentives, such as clawback offsetting, for companies that select Greece for their clinical trials. Faster approval processes, adherence to timelines and tight schedules, and fostering an environment that recognizes the value of life-changing medicines are vital for continued investments in clinical research in the country.
How do you see Roche Hellas’s contribution to Greek society and economy?
Roche Hellas is much more than a pharmaceutical company. We proudly consider ourselves a healthcare company and a partner of society and the economy. Our primary mission remains to work with all stakeholders in the health ecosystem to create a new framework that will allow rapid and sustainable access to innovative life changing treatments, taking into account the social value of new treatments and also to ensure that pharmaceutical financing becomes more evidence-based, fair, transparent and sustainable.
We need to view and treat pharmaceuticals as part of the solution, not part of the problem. In order to harness the benefits that innovation offers to society and the economy, it is imperative that together – industry, government, patients, HCPs – we build an environment that perceives health as an investment and not a cost.
Indicatively, according to data from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), in the European Union and the United Kingdom between 2007 and 2017, pharmaceutical innovation added about two million healthy years of life, which in turn led to productivity growth totaling €27 billion.
Greece has been of course benefiting from life and productivity gains as a result of pharmaceutical innovation. To maintain and maximize these benefits, the State must ensure adequate funding for healthcare, an area where Greece currently lags behind other EU countries. Insufficient funding leads to unsustainable levels of paybacks which put access to innovation at risk, particularly in the hospital sector, where patients’ lives depend on highly innovative treatments. Additionally, it is crucial to establish a framework for evaluating and reimbursing new medicines that considers their social value and enables rapid and sustainable access to innovation. The EU HTAR provides a valuable opportunity for Greece to reassess and improve its existing framework. Lastly, the State should incentivize companies to invest more in R&D and public-private partnerships, which can have a direct positive effect on the healthcare system as a whole.
