Companies in the Health Technology Sector are showing their concern about the current global supply crisis and the increase in the costs of raw materials, energy, the logistics/transport chain and labor. The current situation is limiting the availability of raw materials and electronic components.
For this reason, Health Technology companies ask the administrations for a 'shock plan' that allows them to guarantee the access of patients and health professionals to quality health technology.
"Within the framework of unprecedented and triggered inflation, the impact of the increase in costs in the activity of the Health Technology Sector is causing the lack of viability of many contracts" indicates María Vila, president of the Spanish Federation of Technology Companies Sanitary (Fenin).
“It is necessary to ensure patients' access to essential products that allow them to diagnose and treat their illnesses, which is why it is necessary to guarantee the sustainability of this strategic and essential sector for the proper functioning of healthcare activity”, he adds.
That is why, with its 'shock plan', the federation wants to design "new models for the acquisition of Health Technology that contemplate the flexibility of the prices of public contracts, in order to adapt them to the cost increases that are being producing and the potential cost reductions that may occur”, points out Margarita Alfonsel, general secretary of the entity.
The global supply crisis, and its accompanying consequences, is one of the major concerns of the Sector that Fenin is transferring to political decision makers within a cycle of meetings with the administrations in a framework that continues to promote public-private collaboration. Thus, recently, meetings have been held with different Ministries of Finance and Health throughout the territory.
Fenin has also made other proposals in order to maintain the economic-financial balance of the contracts and greater efficiency based on public-private collaboration.
This is the case, for example, of the application of a permanent reduced VAT to all health products that would allow 1,000 million euros to be available for technological renovation and incorporation of new technologies at the service of patients, or the implementation of a Plan of industrialization of the Health Technology Sector supported by financing mechanisms such as the Next Generation EU Funds to strengthen the national industrial fabric.
