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The medicines supply chain remained €the best-kept secret€ and wholesalers were told they should €make noise about what we do€ at the annual conference of the British Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers on June 23.

BAPW executive director Martin Sawer told the conference that the key value in a medicines supply chain was getting medicines to patients. €The most important value of our particular supply chain is in getting the right medicine to the right patient at the right time €“ always has been and always will be. We forget this at our peril.€

Mr Sawer pointed out the value for money in the supply chain. The UK medicines wholesale network provided £1.4bn of working capital to UK industry. And it delivered medicinal products from over 950 manufacturers to 16,000 individual community pharmacies, hospitals and dispensing doctors. €We all have a responsibility to value our supply chain. If we don't, we will reap the consequences.€

Collaboration was the way to deal with supply problems. €We need to share information and communicate. We should not hide behind legal niceties as much as we have done. Problems, when they do arise, are sorted by collaboration. It's a public health issue and we all know that.€

Sustainability was one of the biggest challenges for the generics industry, now that over 50 per cent of medicines volume across Europe was generic and biosimilar, said Adrian van den Hoven, director-general of the European Generic Medicines Association (EGA). Biosimilars were making the industry more investment intensive, with R&D now accounting for 7 per cent of manufacturers' turnover. Generics and biosimilars saved the EU ‚¬35bn every year.

The industry was considering how to finance the cost of EU regulation in the face of funding cuts. While the majority of regulation came from the EU, most price controls, such as tendering, external reference pricing and claw-backs, came from national governments. Regulation took many forms, including pharmacovigilance fees, implementation of the Falsified Medicines directive, and clinical trials regulations.

Manufacturers had, in the past, produced a number of products at narrow margins, or even at a loss, and subsidised these with more profitable lines. That model was no longer tenable and would lead to a shift in the supply chain so that products may become more expensive and harder to source.