Pharmaceuticals and medical device companies sat down to discuss policy issues and advocacy strategy during AmCham’s Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences Committee’s first gathering of the year. The key decision from the meeting was the establishment of a special subcommittee on medical devices. 

The committee’s co-chairs, Anil Argilla and Bambang Chriswanto from Pfizer Indonesia, hosted the meeting in their new offices at World Trade Center 3, Jakarta. Held on February 10, the meeting had a healthy turnout of companies, plus representatives from the US Foreign Commercial Service and the International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group (IPMG). 

The meeting kicked-off with a shout-out of upcoming events and programs in 2020. The most anticipated AmCham event discussed in the meeting was the Roadmap to Regulatory and Tax Reform Mission taking place March 4-5 in Jakarta. For this event, AmCham, in collaboration with the US Chamber of Commerce, will bring a business delegation comprised of high-level representatives of US companies to visit various ministries and agencies.

Participants also discussed pressing issues for both pharmaceuticals and medical devices, such as access to the BPJS e-catalogue, the halal issue, the National Health Insurance (JKN), etc. Given the complexity of the issues, the committee decided to establish a sub-committee to handle medical devices, which have issues that need to be discussed separately.

One major decision of the meeting was to arrange a courtesy meeting with Minister of Health, Terawan Agus Petranto. Pfizer’s Anil saw the necessity to introduce AmCham’s Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences Committee as a platform for the Ministry of Health to gather industry input and explore areas of collaboration.

For more information about the committee, please contact [email protected].