The Republic's ageing society will be unable to afford the drugs needed to fight illness, unless we close the gap between scientific discoveries and clinical practice. That is according to a group that represents patient advocates, scientists and industry in Ireland.
"The gap between the amount of knowledge that has been created in our universities and our ability to translate that knowledge into something useful in the clinical setting has never been larger," said Dr Pierre Meulien, vice-chairman of the Irish Platform for Patients' Organisations, Science and Industry (IPPOSI).
He was speaking to The Irish Timesahead of a workshop being held in conjunction with the European platform (EPPOSI) on the value innovation in human healthcare, in Dublin Castle yesterday and today.
Dr Meulien said applying scientific findings to healthcare practice was a global challenge and is about efficient use of resources.
"The Government needs to invest more in the infrastructure, such as people with a dual clinical and research background, like clinical scientists and research nurses, and into dedicated facilities at hospital sites to do research on patients," he said.
"I think the only way that society and healthcare systems can afford to use these very high-end therapies is if you are able to monitor the population in parallel and keep the vast majority healthy.
"If you don't have that monitoring in place and if everybody starts to get sick, there's no way we are going to be able to treat people with the better drugs," he said.
"Then you get into terrible ethical dilemmas of why shouldn't a person get treatment irrespective of the cost."
