Equitable access

We are embedding practices into our product portfolio to drive equitable access to healthcare — including digital health, clinical trial diversity, patient centricity, investment in rare diseases, open innovation and IP-sharing arrangements.

AstraZeneca is committed to improving equitable access to healthcare for patients globally. Our approach includes adapting our programmes to integrate into local systems and delivering affordable medicines to patients. We seek to drive positive global health outcomes by:

• Addressing unmet medical needs and barriers to access 
• Increasing the speed and breadth of patient access 
• Driving excellence in product life cycle management 
• Understanding the long-term impacts of scientific advances 

We are playing our part to address health inequities and eliminate discrimination from the delivery of healthcare. As a company at the forefront of scientific and medical innovation, we are also harnessing the latest digital technologies to support improved access. This includes using the power of data and analytics for early diagnosis, and expanding access to the latest medical research and training for healthcare professionals. 

We are committed to designing clinical programmes with equity at the forefront – from idea inception to patient care. Our approach includes increasing the diversity of clinical trial participants so trials better reflect the patients who may use our medicines, which ensures we have a robust and reliable body of evidence. 

We believe people with rare diseases deserve the same attention and investment into finding therapies as anyone else. We supply medicines for rare diseases through our patient support and expanded access programmes and are working to expand the geographies where our rare disease medicines are available.

Equitable access is closely related to other areas of our sustainability strategy, such as Affordability and pricing, Health system resilience, Ethical business culture, including Inclusion and diversity, and Research and Development resource allocation.