More than 50 patient advocates, patient organisations, healthcare leaders, and policymakers gathered in the nation’s capital for the 2025 Patient and Parliament Summit, hosted by Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) Australia. The Summit theme, ‘Shaping Healthcare Together: Patients, Policy and Productivity’, spotlighted the link between a healthy and productive society, the importance of the patient voice in healthcare decision making and the urgent need for healthcare reform that delivers faster and fairer access to innovative medicines for all Australians.
Shaping Healthcare Together: Patients, Policy & Productivity
Australian Minister for Health, Disability and Ageing, The Hon. Mark Butler MP
Held from 7–9 October, the Summit provided a powerful platform for patients to share their lived experiences directly with Members of Parliament. These conversations underscored the human and economic cost of delayed access to treatment, highlighting that lost labour force participation due to chronic disease is projected to cost Australia $67.7 billion by 2030, equating to 459,000 lost productive life years.¹
Owen Smith, BMS Australia & New Zealand General Manager, and the Summit participants
The roundtable for patient organisations convened at the Summit focussed on patient evidence in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and its critical role in supporting healthcare decision making that is informed by patient preferences, values and needs.
Highlights from the Summit
- Patients shared their lived experiences with their Federal Member of Parliament to highlight the critical need for reform that delivers faster and fairer access to medicines.
- Hosted by the Parliamentary Friends of Medicine and featuring The Hon Mark Butler, MP, Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme; Commissioner Alison Roberts of the Productivity Commission; and Richard Vines, the founder of Rare Cancers Australia; a panel discussion focused on the intersection between access to innovative therapies and a more productive Australia.
- At the Shaping Healthcare Together Policy Roundtable the leaders of 25 Australian patient organisations together with policymakers explored HTA reform priorities, including the role of patient evidence and how patient engagement can be incorporated earlier to better support robust HTA decision making.
Watch patients and patient group representatives reflect on the impact of the 2025 Summit in the video below.
Click here to read transcript
Video transcript:
0:04
This this work that BMS does to bring the voice of industry and patients together to Parliament is important work.
0:12
So the theme of our 4th annual Patient Parliament summit this year is around productivity, linking patients policy and productivity.
0:23
And we've brought 20 plus patient organisations to be with us to talk about their personal experiences and how access to medicines can really have an impact on productivity of this nation.
0:37
We've got a once in a generation opportunity here with a new government committed to driving prosperity and productivity in Australia and an HDA reform program that's coming to fruition to bring those things together and to infuse new ambition into how we access and assess the value of new medicines.
0:56
I think real stories are important because it's when you live with a condition that you know what it means for you and your life and your work and your family.
1:05
I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2023.
1:08
Six months before I was diagnosed, immunotherapy was approved under the PBS to enable me to have this immunotherapy following my surgery, which enabled me to continue working throughout my treatment, continue to to be a dad and be there for my children throughout my treatment.
1:26
Compared to the other option, which would have been going through an aggressive form of chemotherapy which would have left me fairly incapacitated.
1:33
Without the patient voice, to have been able to advocate to have these drugs under the PVSII wouldn't be here.
1:41
I don't know if I'd be alive today and functioning as well as I am, but I think novel therapies and getting decisions where people can get access to these are so important for people with chronic disease because they need to have choices.
1:57
Unless we have a healthy population, we don't have a healthy economy.
2:02
We don't have anything.
2:03
And we need to think about the fact that we don't live in an economy.
2:08
We live in a community where we love and care and cherish our friends and our neighbors.
2:15
And what we've heard here today are some incredible stories about the impact not just of the disease, but also of the access to treatment that that patients get or the lack of access to treatment that they get and what impact that that that can have on their lives.
2:29
And when policy makers hear that directly from a person impacted, it really informs their understanding of of what they should do to improve our medicines access system and the health system more broadly.
2:42
And at the end of the day, when we're making decisions, we really need to understand what do the patients want?
2:47
You know, is it it's really important to bring, you know, all these people together and run room.
2:51
And we're thankful for being this, for allowing that to do so.
References:
¹Investing in the prevention of chronic disease to increase productivity in the Australian economy: Submission to the economic reform roundtable (no date) The George Institute for Global Health. Available at: https://www.georgeinstitute.org/our-impact/policy-statements-and-recommendations/investing-in-the-prevention-ofchronic-disease-to-increase-productivity-in-the-australian-economy (Accessed: 29 September 2025)
