BIO Deutschland attends an SME Alliance meeting with Health Minister Gröhe

Federal Minister of Health Hermann Gröhe (in the middle), Niels Riedemann (InflaRX, 3rd from left), Bettina Haedrich (Qiagen, 4th from left), Barbara Behle (Milte-nyi Biotech, 3rd from right) und Michael Kahnert (BIO Deutschland, 2nd from left) (c) BMG/Schinkel

In mid-February the SME Alliance met with the Federal Minister of Health Hermann Gröhe to discuss the health sector environment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Among the companies attending the meeting were BIO Deutschland members InflaRX, Miltenyi and Qiagen. BIO Deutschland welcomed the commitment of the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) to bolster Germany’s position as a competitive location for health research and manufacturing. It also presented ideas on how improvements can be made in terms of enabling in particular the innovative SME sector to drive value creation in the country. Minister Gröhe made clear that the government intends to take further steps in the area of e-health, and that the e-health law put forward at the year’s start was only the beginning. He also stated that the good concepts in the area of personalised medicine should continue to be pursued, adding that it was, however, important to remove current impediments from the system. BIO Deutschland stressed that if Germany is to achieve real progress here, a joint approach including government, industry, physicians, health insurance funds and patients would be needed. The last topic discussed, pharmaceutical products that enable new therapies, clearly showed again that over-regulation can hinder the development of innovative concepts.