Alternativas Terapéuticas Equivalentes

Therapeutic equivalence is becoming of the hottest topics in Spanish pharmaceutical law and practice.

On 27 March 2013, the Central Court for Administrative Contractual Appeals ruled that when approving an invitation to tender dividing the object of the contract in various lots, different active ingredients should not be included in the same group because therapeutic equivalence should not be taken for granted.

Nevertheless, some regions and hospitals are still carrying out comparison exercises aiming to declare that some products are equivalent and that, because of this, only the one having a lower price may be prescribed by doctors.

In this presentation, Jordi Faus has addressed how these measures may be contrary to the rights of patients, to the freedom of doctors to prescribe the product they deem more appropriate; and to the rights of companies as these may result from Spanish and EU rules on pricing and reimbursement of medicines.