The aim of the meeting was to foster improved cooperation to provide timely and affordable  access to medicines for EU citizens. EMA’s executive director Guido Rasi underlined the role played by regulators, HTA bodies and payers as both gatekeepers and enablers for the development of medicines within healthcare systems. EMA, HTA bodies and payers intervene at different stages of the process in allowing patients access to new medicines in the EU. During the meeting EMA and the healthcare payers discussed the delays that can occur in pricing and reimbursement negotiations at national and regional level and pointed to the lack of sufficient evidence provided by drug developers for relative- and cost-effectiveness assessments at time of market authorisation. This means that more research is needed post-authorisation, slowing down the entry on the market of new medicines. Instead, healthcare payers and EMA support the early provision of adequate information. ESIP is thankful to EMA for organising such a fruitful meeting and looks forward to pursuing cooperation with the European medicines regulator in the future, alongside existing initiativessuch as the multistakeholder platform Mechanism of Coordinated Access to Orphan Medicinal Products (MoCA) and EUnetHTA. Find out more in the press release.