2. Facilitating access to medical nutrition

Patients in need of medical nutrition must be offered the possibility to access it at the best financial condition, based on the health system regulating their health care provision. MNI member companies have a mission to make their products available to the benefit of patients, and this can only occur with fit-for-purpose legislation allowing access to care, appropriate reimbursement policies, and through demonstrating, not only the clinical efficacy and but also the value of their products and services to patients and health systems.

HEOR oncology model

To this end, the Market Access working group commissioned an agency to work together with MNI to demonstrate the economic value of medical nutrition in oncology. After a year of work, several meetings to define methodology, processes, and data generation, we developed a health economic and outcomes (HEOR) model that is being tested in the first weeks of January 2023, and will be followed by visuals, infographics and articles to disseminate findings widely, including at national level.

This is an important piece of work showing that medical nutrition interventions in cancer care are to be considered not only for optimum care but also as an affordable investment for better outcomes.

Ensuring proper regulation for medical nutrition and nutrition interventions

MNI released a statement on “Food for Special Medical Purposes (FSMPs) versus General Foods” to clarify in detail the differences between categories of foods, in particular between FSMPs and general/fortified foods, within the scope of the EU regulatory framework.

The Regulatory Affairs working group, in collaboration with Specialised Nutrition Europe (SNE) and International Special Dietary Foods Industries (ISDI) organisation, used extracts from this statement to publish a simple table to improve the understanding of the FSMP category among non-specialists in this sector.

The table was further duplicated in two other documents: one referring to EU FSMPs law1 and one to the global concept of FSMPs under Codex2. These documents were respectively branded together with SNE and ISDI.

MNI is also active on issues related to labelling of FSMPs, such as the information on the front of the product pack and content claims.

These FSMPs documents are part of a wider initiative to inform relevant stakeholders about FSMPs, as well as to be a reference for the industry at large. We trust that this will, in turn, allow easier access to medical nutrition for patients through better education and support from policymakers.

MNI has also worked with a consultancy firm on studying the feasibility to label FSMPs as organic, the objective being to offer patients the opportunity to access organic FSMPs and address questions that the European Commission (EC) raised in the past. The consultancy provided overall positive feedback on positioning FSMPs for organic labelling where appropriate. Currently it is not possible, under the EU law, to label FSMPs as organic. However, MNI – jointly with SNE – intends to follow-up with the EC on this topic.