Listen: The Novartis Commitment to Patients and Caregivers
Novartis works with the patient community around the world to discover new ways to improve and extend people’s lives. Our significant investment in research and development underpins our commitment to using science-based innovation to address some of society's most challenging healthcare issues. Only by working together can we improve outcomes for patients and change the practice of medicine.
We recognize the importance of patients and caregivers understanding what they can expect from Novartis.
Respecting and understanding the patient community perspective
We commit to actively seeking out and listening to insights from the patient community to inform decision-making throughout the development and commercialization process for our medicines, for the mutual benefit of patients, healthcare systems and Novartis.
We commit to providing educational opportunities that are informed by the patient communities’ insights, empower patients to seek the right care, and help healthcare professionals best treat their patients.
We commit to working to make our products easier to use, especially for patients living with physical limitations, and we will seek advice from the patient community about how to improve the usability of our products.
We commit to providing easy-to-understand information about our products, including providing timely and accurate medical information to healthcare professionals so they can best support the appropriate use of our products with their patients.
We commit to fully respecting the patient community’s independence and integrity, and to working in a simple, transparent way.
Expanding access to our medicines
We commit to working with the patient community and other stakeholders, such as governments, payers, healthcare professionals and other pharmaceutical companies, to help get patients the medicine they need.
We commit to implementing access strategies for all our new medicines based on three principles: addressing the needs of underserved populations through research and development; further improving affordability of our medicines; and strengthening healthcare systems.
We commit to continuing to provide tailored and scalable access solutions, including patient assistance programs, equitable commercial models, social business models, zero-profit models and drug donations, as well as to support access by bringing generics and biosimilars to market through our Sandoz Division.
We commit to exploring options to provide patients with access to our investigational medicines, if requested, prior to regulatory approval.
Conducting responsible clinical trials
We commit to seeking patient community input and preferences early in the drug development process, as well as continuously improving how we share easy-to-understand information with patients before, during and after a clinical trial.
We commit to improving access to and participation in clinical trials by using insights from the patient community in trial designs, exploring novel technology-enabled solutions, and implementing strategies to ensure that our trials reflect the diversity of patients.
We recognize that the results of clinical trials should be used to advance public health and we commit to giving the patient community and others access to trial information, including outcomes, whether positive or negative.
After the completion of a Novartis clinical trial, we commit to providing the results on clinicaltrials.gov and EudraCT. We also ask that the independent sponsors of all Investigator Initiated Trials (IITs) supported by Novartis make all results public.
After successful completion of clinical programs, we commit to registering our new medicines in every country where patients have participated in trials. Where a medicine is registered and not commercially available, we commit to providing it, as permitted by local legislation, to patients who participated in trials to ensure their treatment is not interrupted.
Recognizing the importance of transparency and reporting
We commit to transparently sharing information on our interactions with healthcare professionals and the patient community, and to disclosing all financial and relevant non-financial support.
We commit to regularly reporting progress on these commitments.
(Signed by the Executive Committee of Novartis on behalf of all Novartis associates)