No innovative pharma company selling into the reimbursed market anywhere in the world can hope any more to escape scrutiny of the cost and the value of their medicines.

It looks like plans to potentially privatize the state-owned Serbian firm, Galenika Pharmaceuticals, are beginning to gather some pace with efforts apparently underway to elicit Indian interest.

Dr June Raine is the first ever chair of the European Medicines Agency's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC), which oversees the risk management of your medicines. Dr Raine is also director of vigilance and risk management at MHRA, the UK regulator, as well as a member of the World Health Organization Advisory Committee on the Safety of Medicinal Products. She talked to Scrip about her passion for public health, preventing drug crises, and dancing to ABBA.

Larger firms may account for the vast majority (87%) of new medicines recommended for approval by the European Medicines Agency, but smaller firms, academia, public bodies and public/private partnerships (PPPs) are responsible for initiating the development of than 40% of these products.