How can we use innovation to keep medicines affordable and accessible? In FAST’s new podcast series, we look for answers to this increasingly urgent question. Using practical examples and interviews with experts in the field, we examine how technological innovation and cost control do not have to work against each other, but can actually reinforce each other. How innovation and affordability can go hand in hand.

The first episode focuses on the development and affordability of orphan drugs. These are drugs for rare conditions for which there is often no effective treatment. Despite European regulations to encourage the development of these drugs, prices remain high. As a result, in practice, patients regularly find it difficult or impossible to access these life-changing treatments at all.

Listen to the episode now (in Dutch).

Why do these drugs remain so expensive? And what innovations can help improve affordability and availability? In this episode, we discuss this with Sibren van den Berg, director of RARE-NL, Margot Overgaag, senior policy officer at the Dutch Healthcare Authority and associated with the MAUG programme, and Hanka Dekker, director of VKS, the patient association for people with hereditary metabolic diseases. Together, they explore bottlenecks, opportunities and future scenarios at the intersection of innovation and affordability.