Enabling Global Regulatory Environments to Deliver Better Self Care Interventions

Description: Rising healthcare costs due to increased prevalence of non-communicable chronic diseases and ageing population is a huge challenge for health systems around the world. In addition, there are also countries where access to formal health systems is simply not an option to economically vulnerable people, due to limited healthcare access and prohibitive cost. Regardless of the market archetype, current and future public health approaches need to be based on a strengthened personal responsibility to pressing future challenges. Self-care interventions, such as non-prescription medicines, empower people to take control of their own health, improve health coverage and pandemic resilience, as well as lower healthcare costs.

Regulatory systems are a key enabler in providing access to safe, effective, and quality medical products to improve public health outcomes. This session will discuss the role of regulations and processes governing approval of self-care interventions including Rx-to-OTC medicine reclassification guidelines, incentives to reward innovation, access to self-care products, direct-to-consumer advertising, that determine the ability of the consumer healthcare sector to drive innovation and adoption of self-care interventions.

The Global Self-Care Federation, in consultation with the World Health Organization (WHO), has developed a policy tool that assess self-care readiness in national health systems. This tool, the Self-Care Readiness Index (SCRI), has been applied to 20 countries, including developed (e.g., USA, Canada, Europe) and developing markets (e.g., Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.

Using a combination of short presentations, to set context, and an interactive panel discussion we aim to provide regulatory professionals a brief global overview of SCRI findings of current regulatory landscape, best practices, and improvement areas. The Global Self-care Federation is working towards a WHO resolution on self-care which will have significant regulatory implications.