A first-of-its-kind meeting hosted by GSK in Madrid this week brought together public and private healthcare leaders to address a critical issue: bolstering preventative care through increased vaccination rates in Spain. Experts at the Collaborative Health Innovation Meeting underscored the need for unified strategies, notably as an aging population increases vulnerability to preventable infectious diseases. The discussion centered on innovative approaches – from leveraging new technologies to fostering stronger collaboration – to elevate adult vaccination coverage to levels currently seen in childhood programs.
A collaborative approach is key to advancing healthcare innovation, according to experts who convened at the first Collaborative Health Innovation Meeting hosted by GSK. The event brought together public and private health leaders to prioritize preventative care, particularly adult vaccination, within Spain’s healthcare strategy. Preventative measures like vaccination are crucial for maintaining public health and reducing strain on healthcare systems.
Participants emphasized the need for a unified approach to address public health challenges, highlighting that collaboration is essential for both increasing access to vaccination and raising public awareness. This unified model aims to improve vaccination rates and overall health outcomes.
Innovation and Collaboration: A Vital Partnership
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The meeting opened with remarks from Mercedes Fernández de Castro, Director of the Vaccine Unit at GSK Spain, and Jorge Pou, Director of Innovation and Commercial Acceleration at GSK Spain.
Fernández de Castro stressed that vaccination “is a fundamental pillar of prevention, as it protects lives, reduces hospitalizations, and strengthens the sustainability of the healthcare system.” She pointed to the demographic shifts occurring now, noting that “the accelerating aging of the population will increase chronicity and vulnerability to preventable infectious diseases. Therefore, for GSK, investment in immunization is vital.”
Fernández de Castro insisted that “the goal is to place prevention at the center of our healthcare assistance. Because investing in vaccination is protecting our present, but also protecting our future.”
GSK aims to make adult vaccination “resemble more and more the successes we have achieved with childhood vaccination,” seeking “universal access and coverage similar to the more than 90% achieved in childhood antigens.” According to the director of the Vaccine Unit, this improvement can be achieved through innovation, “understood not only as technology (new platforms, sophisticated data analysis, digital strategies) but also as the ability to transform prevention into a shared priority.”
Pou emphasized that “collaboration is a concept inseparable from innovation.” “I love the name ‘Collaborative Health Innovation’… What we have clear is that in any case there is something that always repeats and that is that innovation never happens in isolation. All of us who are part of GSK work to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease.”
GSK’s commitment to this collaborative approach is demonstrated by the company’s open innovation platform. The platform seeks to bring together stakeholders from the healthcare ecosystem to make the system “more efficient, more patient-centered and, in that way, more sustainable.” Currently, they have more than 50 projects underway with various hospitals and regional services, addressing issues ranging from adult vaccination to improved diagnostics.
Pou concluded by emphasizing that public and private healthcare are “two sides of the same coin in the public healthcare system, which is why this approach to care and process innovation is unique,” focusing innovation without distinction, “seeking the sustainability of healthcare systems as a whole.”
A panel discussion, moderated by Ignacio Sánchez Sebastián, Public Health Area Manager (PHAM) of GSK, featured María Vázquez Torres, Head of the Prevention Area of the Community of Madrid, and José Domingo Martín García, from the Preventive Medicine Service of the Fundación Jiménez Díaz, centered on the value of a lifelong vaccination schedule from the perspectives of health, sustainability, and equity.
Health, Sustainability, and Equity: Key Considerations for Vaccination
Vázquez offered a public health perspective, highlighting that the vaccination schedule “is a unique tool at the service of preventing the 18 diseases to which it is directed.” She underscored that “the benefit to health is irrefutable, both at the individual and collective level, thanks to herd immunity. I will refer to a recent WHO study which demonstrates and concludes that vaccination activities worldwide over the past 70 years have saved 154 million lives. Vaccination has brought us here, allowing us to eradicate diseases such as smallpox.”
Martín echoed this view, reminding attendees that “vaccines are one of two public health measures that have saved millions of lives, along with water fluoridation.” He added that vaccination not only reduces symptoms and severity, but also prevents serious repercussions in an individual’s functionality.
Vázquez noted that “from a social point of view, it is a tool for cohesion, as it allows the entire population to work around a shared preventive policy.” Economically, she recalled that investment in vaccination avoids direct costs (hospital admissions, ICUs) and offers a great economic return, because “there are studies that speak of a return of 5 euros for every euro invested in childhood vaccination.”
Martín agreed that vaccination is “one of the most collective measures that exist,” also pointing out the indirect costs avoided, such as “sick leave or loss of capacity.”
Regarding equity, Vázquez emphasized that “the vocation of the vaccination schedule is to be universal, with free and accessible administration for the entire population.” However, she admitted that “we must be vigilant to ensure that the most vulnerable groups do not lose access.”
Addressing Adult Vaccination Coverage and the Role of Healthcare Professionals
The discussion shifted to vaccination coverage in the adult population, an area requiring significant improvement according to the participants. The moderator, Sánchez, clarified that “it is true that vaccines per se do not prevent mortality, what prevents it is vaccination collective. It is true that public health makes a great effort in terms of vaccine purchasing, that is, people are not aware of all the effort behind it, on the one hand, the budgetary issue, but then everything that goes behind it, contracting, supply… it is a great effort.”
Vázquez acknowledged that adult coverage rates “are acceptable, but we will not be complacent.” She reported that in Madrid, the highest coverage is for pneumococcus in people over 60, reaching nearly 60%, although this is still below the ideal. She also noted that people over 60 with risk factors have coverage rates 15 to 20 percentage points higher than those without risk, indicating a need to improve vaccination rates in the age-based population.
Martín highlighted the importance of taking advantage of the opportunities that new immunizations provide “to update patients’ vaccination status. These opportunities to incorporate new vaccines should allow us to update that vaccination schedule that the patient probably does not have well updated. A flu infection has a higher probability of having a cardiovascular event… Vaccination allows us to reduce that risk by up to 45%.”
A crucial topic was the influence of healthcare professionals on the success of vaccination campaigns. Vázquez was categorical, stating that “the healthcare professional is key to the vaccination recommendation, that is, it is everything. The main motivation for getting vaccinated is that it is a vaccination recommended by the professional.” However, she pointed to the low coverage rates in this group (41% for flu vaccination in Madrid), “which is a challenge, because it is difficult to recommend vaccination if they do not receive it themselves and do not believe in vaccine administration.”
Martín insisted that “we have to set an example, obviously, we are the pillar on which all that trust is based and for us it should be something mandatory. Vaccination is a voluntary act, but first we should give that example. And that is because we are also protecting our colleagues, the patients we attend to…”
Public-Private Collaboration: A Necessary Alliance
Vázquez affirmed that in the Community of Madrid, this collaboration “is a demonstrable fact,” exemplified by the fact that “all vaccinations are available in both the public and private networks. In seasonal campaigns such as the flu campaign, the Directorate General of Public Health collaborates with more than 700 authorized centers, providing vaccines and materials.”
Martín García insisted on the need for this alliance, stating that “public-private collaboration is necessary. We saw it in the pandemic with the need for vaccines. Thanks to that collaboration, it was possible to provide economic resources, that productivity that allowed us to have a vaccine that was immunogenic and safe. This cooperation allows the private network to provide resources that are often less accessible in the public network, helping to increase population coverage.”
The Future: Personalization and Challenges
Vázquez expressed hope, asking that “vaccination continue to be considered an investment and not an expense.” However, she pointed out two challenges. The first, “not to lose sight of equity”; the second and most pressing, “to ensure that the schedule throughout life is internalized at the individual level by the adult and incorporated into the collective social imagination, counteracting the anti-scientific arguments that are beginning to circulate. I believe that population recommendation is equivalent to sustaining public funding.”
Martín concluded with a futuristic vision focused on the individualization of vaccination, looking “at the development of unique information systems to know each patient’s vaccination history. I think we are moving towards a personalized vaccination… vaccination is moving towards that more risk-genetic approach, right? Of those vaccines that will be necessary, having that patient’s genetic profile.”
In conclusion, the GSK meeting confirmed that, although Spain has made significant progress in lifelong prevention, the path to full coverage and sustainability requires not only more molecular innovation, but “a deep collaboration that ensures that vaccination is a socially internalized and financially protected priority,” according to Vázquez, who admitted that “the key is to treat prevention as the cornerstone of the system, not just as a cost to avoid, but as the most profitable investment for collective health.”
