Opportunity windows and coalitions:

SUS and the Brazilian national pharmaceutical industry

Abstract

In the light of the notions of health innovation system and health industrial complex, the article addresses the articulations between health systems and the pharmaceutical industry, highlighting the implications that the institutional formats of the former entail for the modalities of support for health research and innovation in industry. It briefly discusses such articulations in the US, UK and Germany, paradigms of different contemporary formats of health systems, and analyzes the Brazilian experience. Finally, it assesses the possibilities of a virtuous interaction in the country between the health system and the pharmaceutical industry, in order to affirm the public dimension of the first and the innovative profile of the national production of medicines.