Procurement and buyers
The price you pay for a medicine is set by its exclusivity position as much as by any negotiation. MPA shows which products are protected, which are opening up, and what is happening to published prices and supply, so that contracts and stock are timed well.
The questions you face
Which of the products we buy most are coming off patent in the next one to three years, and when will the price actually move?
What is the published price in other European markets, and how does our price compare on the same basis?
Where are shortages and export restrictions building, and which single-source products are most exposed?
Who holds the licences for an alternative, and is a parallel import or a second supplier available?
How MPA helps
The official data, kept current, with the experience to read it. We have done this since 1973.
The dates behind the price
Patent and SPC expiry positions for the products you buy, maintained from the registers, so a price change can be anticipated rather than discovered.
Prices in context
Published list prices across European markets at presentation level, aligned by price type, and NHS prescribing volumes and value for England.
A second opinion
When a register date, a licence or a published price does not add up, ask. Help interpreting the data is part of every subscription.
What to read first
All resources- ExplainersWhy the expiry date is not the launch date in Europe (and what is)A patent or SPC expiry date on a register is the start of the answer, not the end. Between it and the first generic pack on a shelf sit secondary patents, paediatric extensions, regulatory clocks, pricing procedures and litigation, and they differ by country. The steps, in order, and where each one can move the date.
- PricesList price versus net priceThe price on a national list is rarely the price anyone pays. Confidential rebates, managed-entry agreements, clawbacks, tender prices and wholesale discounts all sit between the two. What the gap is made of, where it is largest, and how to work with published prices when the real ones are hidden.
- PricesWholesale and pharmacy margins on medicines in EuropeBetween a manufacturer's price and a pharmacy's shelf sit two regulated margins, and no two countries set them the same way. Percentages, fixed fees, degressive scales and caps: how the systems are built, worked examples, and what the structure means for the price gap that parallel trade and procurement work with.
- ExplainersMedicine shortage registers in EuropeEvery European country now publishes some record of medicines in short supply, and no two mean the same thing by 'shortage'. The EU-level sources, the national registers and export-restriction lists country by country, what each actually records, and how traders, buyers and planners should read them.
- ExplainersUnlicensed medicinesA medicine with no marketing authorisation in a country can still reach a patient there, by one of several routes that each have their own rules, suppliers and prices. What the EU's named-patient and compassionate-use provisions allow, how the UK's specials and import notifications work, how the large member states run early access, and what the routes mean for traders, planners and buyers.
- ExplainersWhat breaks when you track loss of exclusivity in a spreadsheet, and what to do insteadMost companies start with a spreadsheet of products and expiry dates, and most of those spreadsheets are wrong within a year. The seven ways they fail, from one row per product to dates typed rather than calculated, and the structure, rules and review cadence that keep a loss-of-exclusivity list honest, whether it stays in Excel or not.
See MPA Search in action
A free online demonstration with our team, with time for your questions.