Focus on how to treat patients, not who gets treated, says industry head

A recent news report on the benefits of new drug treatments, while important, presented a limited perspective, according to an opinion piece in Helsingin Sanomat. The author argues that the development of medicine should be viewed as a layered process, not just a comparison between yesterday's and today's treatments.

While the immediate difference between older and newer therapies might not always seem revolutionary, the cumulative progress over a decade can fundamentally transform disease treatment for the patient's benefit. The piece questions whether anyone would advocate for halting medical progress at the level of the 1980s, highlighting the dramatic improvements seen in conditions like MS over the past decades.

The core argument is that the focus should shift from debating 'who' receives treatment to 'how' each patient is treated. This approach, the author suggests, better reflects the service commitments of a welfare society. Anne-Mari Virolainen, CEO of the Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Finland, penned the opinion piece, advocating for a more holistic view of medical advancement and patient care.

“

We should think more about how we treat each patient, rather than who we treat and who we don't.