2017 Methodology for the 2018 Access to Medicine Index

Globally, two billion people still cannot access the medicine they need. Among the many stakeholders working to improve this situation, pharmaceutical companies have a crucial role to play. For the last ten years, the Access to Medicine Foundation has built stakeholder consensus on what we expect from pharmaceutical companies to address this global health priority.

The methodology for the 2018 Access to Medicine Index is a product of this rigorous consensus-building process, developed over the course of six Index cycles. In 2017, the Index research team applied stricter standards to each metric, resulting in a tighter focus on where pharmaceutical companies have the greatest potential to make change.

The Index will track company action against 69 indicators to rank 20 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. It will measure companies’ actions to improve access to medicine across 106 low- and middle-income countries and in relation to 77 high-burden diseases, conditions and pathogens.

The Foundation will now begin the process of data collection, verification, scoring and analysis, before publishing the next Access to Medicine Index in late 2018. The Foundation will use this latest methodology to provide guidance to pharmaceutical companies on where the priorities now lie, and how they match with the many solutions and practices identified in previous iterations of the Index.