Amid surging geopolitical tensions, increased global health threats, and strained public budgets, global health leaders and pharmaceutical executives converged in Geneva with a unified message: medical innovation must be treated as a critical investment not a healthcare drain. Showcasing this shift, Canada unveiled strategic investments and new regulations.

GENEVA – Inside the packed ballroom of the luxurious Intercontinental Hotel, during a flagship event hosted by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) on Tuesday, large screens broadcast a simple promise of continuous innovation so that “the next generation of medicines and vaccines can deliver a healthier, stronger future”.

“Pharmaceutical innovation has accounted for more than 70% of the increase in life expectancy across G20 and developing countries,” said moderator Isabel Kumar in her opening remarks. But at the same time, G20 economies are losing an estimated one trillion dollars every year to preventable health conditions, she added.

Exploring solutions at scale, the panel keynotes and discussions bridged public, private, and geopolitical sectors. The high-level speakers included Canadian Minister of Health Marjorie Michel and AstraZeneca chair Michel Demaré. They were followed by a panel discussion with Monique Vledder, World Bank Group global director, Florika Fink-Hooijer, Director-General of the EU’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), Penny Heaton of Johnson & Johnson, and Michael Lobritz of Roche.

The experts acknowledged that global health architecture currently faces immense strain from escalating vulnerabilities, including ageing populations, antimicrobial resistance, and rising rates of non-communicable diseases. Consequently, leaders urged a major mindset shift, positioning sustained investments in medical innovation as vital catalysts for economic growth.

Health investments’ economic potential

Despite their differing mandates, the panellists reached a firm consensus: governments must abandon short-term budgeting and invest in medical innovation to secure long-term national resilience and productivity. This demands a profound departure from reactive spending toward proactive strategic investments.

Echoing this shared conviction during his concluding remarks, IFPMA Director General David Reddy emphasised the overarching economic value of the sector.

“Investing in health innovation is not a tradeoff, it’s a multiplier,” said Reddy.

To explain the broader economic stakes, the World Bank’s Vledder noted that an unhealthy workforce fundamentally stalls local economies, while funds flowing into the health sector offer tremendous potential for job creation.

Industry pushes for tripling of prevention budgets

AstraZeneca Chair Demaré reinforced this point, stating that a healthy population experiences fewer sick days and drives higher productivity. He highlighted that establishing a healthy global population could boost the GDP by 7% by 2050 – an economic gain equivalent to the combined economies of Germany and Japan.

“So we need a mindset change here to look at medicine and especially innovative medicines as an investment for the future,” said Demaré.

Early diagnosis and preventative treatments could drastically reduce long-term hospital costs and boost this overall economic productivity. Currently, OECD countries allocate an average of only 3% of their healthcare budgets to prevention, a figure Demaré argued should double or triple to have a real impact.

He emphasised that this shift should rely heavily on functional public-private partnerships, pointing to specific collaborative efforts, such as the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience, which assesses health systems across more than 30 countries to identify localised governance gaps and propose targeted technological solutions.

Canada announces strategic investment

In the spirit of the industries’ demands, Canada positioned itself as a pragmatic, reliable partner in the global supply chain, navigating amidst geopolitical instability and contrasting its approach with nations relying heavily on threats and tariffs – an indirect reference to the United States under President Trump.

“Tariffs are not the Canadian way. Our values are anchored in respect yet viability, predictability and collaboration and the fundamental belief in talent and research,” said Michel.

Breaking news on the IFPMA stage, she announced a fresh $131 million injection into the Pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance. The public investment aims to unify Canada’s fragmented healthcare system into a single market, thereby accelerating drug price negotiations and reducing administrative burdens.

The government had also previously announced $1.7 billion to attract world-leading researchers, transforming the nation into a clinical trial powerhouse. By modernising clinical trial frameworks and aligning with international regulators, Canada aims to reduce the time between drug submission and approval by up to 50%.

“We need a regulatory system that is timely, predictable, and grounded in science. One that fiercely protects Canadians while giving companies a clear reason to invest in Canada,” said Michel.

Europe pivots to security amidst new threats

Across the Atlantic, the EU is also heavily investing in its pharmaceutical sector to secure long-term strategic autonomy. Recent legislative moves, such as the Critical Medicines Act, aim to prevent medicine shortages, boost domestic manufacturing, and position the bloc as a global leader by fostering a competitive innovation ecosystem.

However, these proactive health initiatives face a formidable obstacle: severe budget constraints compounded by escalating geopolitical conflicts. As financial resources shrink across Europe, medical innovation is increasingly losing critical funding to traditional military priorities against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and increased geopolitical tension.

“We had quite a stable budget, and then the political levels decided… we have security as a major risk. So we lost €,      .1 billion… because indeed health got the lower priority,” said Fink-Hooijer.

To maintain regional production capacity and true preparedness, Fink-Hooijer argued that European officials can no longer view medical innovation merely as an ad hoc healthcare cost. Instead, they must treat it as a foundational pillar of geopolitical defence through structured investments.

Reflecting this shift in mindset, HERA actively bridges the gap between health and traditional security by establishing a dedicated unit to monitor advanced biowarfare risks.

“We do have now also a civil-military unit in order to really look at that type of threat scenario… because we know that it could also be with AI abuse due to other types of artificial or intentionally produced pathogens,” Fink-Hooijer announced.

Meanwhile, restricted public budgets inevitably force regulatory bodies into making high-stakes gambles on future threats. HERA recently directed its scarce resources toward developing a vaccine for the Ebola Sudan strain – a calculated strategic bet that became a bad choice in hindsight, Fink-Hooijer admitted, as it completely missed the current outbreak.

Fragility, fragmentation and folly

While scientific capabilities accelerate at unprecedented rates and countries compete over production capacities, the global health architecture remains vulnerable to fragmented supply chains. Roche’s Lobritz outlined the industry’s structural weak points through what he termed the “three Fs”: fragility, fragmentation, and folly.

He warned that innovation pipelines remain extremely fragile, lacking the investor capital necessary to mature early-stage compounds. Out of 14 viral families with pandemic potential, there are currently only 18 clinical compounds in development, mirroring similar capital shortages in the antimicrobial resistance market.

Furthermore, fragmented ecosystems prevent diverse health sectors from coordinating effectively, leading to the dangerous folly of relying on reactive scaling during a sudden crisis without prior preparation.

True resilience demands sustained, peacetime collaboration to ensure every therapeutic agent is ready before the crisis hits. Likening the pharmaceutical supply chain to a bustling restaurant kitchen handling a massive dinner rush, he emphasised the vast, unseen preparation required behind the scenes to successfully deliver the final product.

“The creation of a novel medicine that changes the course of the life of an individual is not an eventuality or a certainty and needs to be supported,” concluded Lobritz.

Addressing the global healthcare gap

For this, governments must invest, also to ensure life-saving medical innovation actually reaches the populations that need it most, the participants argued.

Outside the IFPMA ballroom, however, health equity advocates caution that framing high-cost pharmaceutical innovation and public-private partnerships as primary drivers of economic resilience can overshadow the need for fundamental strengthening of public health infrastructure, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where access to basic therapeutics remains a major obstacle.

The challenge extends far beyond laboratory breakthroughs to the ultimate end-user. Outlining the World Bank’s current attempt to reach 1.5 billion people with essential health services, Vledder acknowledged that scientific innovation means little if delivery systems in fragile states remain broken.

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Image Credits: Felix Sassmannshausen/HPW.