Alexander Natz is the Secretary General of the European Confederation of Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs (EUCOPE) in Brussels and advises innovative pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including start-ups, in regulatory and pricing & reimbursement matters from the EU law and German law perspective. From 2008 to 2013, he was Head of the Brussels Office of Bundesverband der Pharmazeutischen Industrie e.V. (BPI). Before, he worked as a lawyer at Sträter Law Firm in Germany with a special focus on managed entry agreements and licensing of pharmaceuticals. Dr. Natz has also worked in the field of competition law with the European Commission and in the pharmaceutical industry.
As the EU Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Regulation reshapes the way health technologies are evaluated across Europe, it brings both new opportunities and challenges for patient involvement in the decision-making process. This regulation emphasizes the importance of integrating patient perspectives into the assessment of treatments, which raises key questions about what successful patient involvement looks like. Effective engagement means ensuring that patients’ lived experiences, needs, and priorities are not only heard but meaningfully influence outcomes. A successful model of involvement goes beyond consultation to co-creation, where patients actively contribute to the design and interpretation of assessments. However, the roles of individual patients and patient organizations in this process differ. Individual patients bring personal insights and lived experience, often providing powerful testimony about the real-world impact of treatments. In contrast, patient organizations represent a broader community of patients, advocating for collective interests and ensuring that diverse patient voices are considered. This panel will explore these dynamics, discussing how individual and organizational contributions can complement each other to create a more patient-centered approach to HTA, and the implications this holds for the future of healthcare policy and practice across Europe.