Ireland joined the Beneluxa Initiative since June 2018, where the NCPE is one of the leading Irish partners.
What is the Beneluxa Initiative?
The Beneluxa initiative is a collaboration between Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Luxembourg and Ireland. The collaboration aims for sustainable access to, and appropriate use of, medicines in the participating countries, and to increase patients’ access to high quality affordable treatments.
What are the objectives of the Beneluxa Initiative?
The objectives of the Initiative are as follows: enhance patients’ access to high quality and affordable treatments; improve the payers’ position in the market through joint negotiations; increase transparency on pricing between the collaborating countries; share policy expertise and a focus on knowledge building and; enable national health challenges to be anticipated more effectively through the use of horizon scanning.
What are the areas of collaboration?
- Joint price negotiations
- Horizon Scanning
- Health Technology Assessment
- Information sharing and policy exchange.
Where can I get more information on the Beneluxa Initiative?
More details on the Beneluxa Initiative, including submission templates, are available on its website, www.beneluxa.org. Follow Beneluxa on Twitter, @BeneluxaCoop
The outcomes of joint HTA assessments conducted within the Beneluxa Initiative are published on this website, under the Assessments menu, and are linked here: “Joint Beneluxa reports”.
Joint policy positions and statements are available here (hyperlink to location on our website), and press releases are available here (https://beneluxa.org/about_pr).
Joint reports and statements
- 08 October 2021 – Outcome of joint negotiations for Zolgensma
- 01 October 2021 – Assessment of COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies is needed
- Short Statement on Alzheimer’s HTA
- Joint Statement of the Beneluxa Initiative and the Nordic Pharmaceutical Forum
- Beneluxa Statement on high cost SMA treatments
- Beneluxa Position Statement on CAR-T
- Transparency of prices
Joint Beneluxa reports
- Onasemnogene abeparvovec (Zolgensma)
The NCPE contributed directly to the authoring of the Beneluxa assessment report on Zolgensma® (Executive summary Zolgensma), a gene therapy treatment for spinal muscular atrophy.
- OTL-200 (Libmeldy)
The NCPE contributed directly to the authoring of the Beneluxa assessment report on OTL-200 (Executive summary Libmeldy), a gene therapy treatment for metachromatic leukodystrophy.
Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands, as members of the Beneluxa Initiative, have successfully concluded joint pricing negotiations for atidarsagene (Libmeldy®). The HSE has approved reimbursement following joint confidential price negotiations, January 2024.
Further information is available here.
