The drugmaker’s incoming ceo called on pharma and the medical profession to intensify an emphasis on the value of new meds in hopes of repairing what he called a “shattered equilibrium” during a speech yesterday.

In his first extensive public remarks since being named as the replacement for Jean-Pierre Garnier – he takes up the post next month – Andrew Witty told the Academy of Medical Sciences that he sought a more intensive dialogue and “much more from the buyer side on what value means,” according to The Financial Times.

Speaking at the Wellcome Centre in London, Witty said science would find new medical cures, but only at a price that reflected the full value of new medicines in boosting health. And he said there needed to be more emphasis to ensure new meds considered to be effective were taken up by the National Health Service, and more “open-mindedness” in talks between industry and government.

“We are like two ships missing in the night,” he told the gathering.

His comments were made as pharma struggles to overcome investor scepticism about its efforts to produce new meds and complaints by purchasers about high prices but modest additional therapeutic benefits. While conceding pharma productivity had slumped in recent years, Witty expressed confidence in a new era of breakthrough medicines to treat illnesses including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and metabolic disorders.

However, he warned that the UK’s traditional role as a global leader in research and development was under threat, with its historical strength built before the emergence of other drug development centers in Boston and San Francisco, and well before Singapore, South Korea, India and China.

He called for greater collaboration between companies and academia, arguing there was too much fragmentation and little value placed by universities on the experience gained by those who worked in industry.

He expressed confidence that large companies like Glaxo were as capable as smaller ones of developing medicines, but said his company would “juice things up a bit” by helping foster more collaboration with partners. He also said spin-outs of Glaxo units and other drugmakers into standalone entities was possible in the longer term.