In the Ministry of Health's budget prediction between 2008 and 2011, the government intends to spend R$ 12 billion each year on purchases in the pharmaceutical industry to meet the health system's needs. This study's main objective is to evaluate the implied technological development in the competitive production of 20 strategic products for Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS - Brazil's National Health System), as well as the evolution of the link between national medicine production and the network management of SUS. The new Ministry of Health's medicine policy aims at containing the pharmaceutical industry's commercial deficit by encouraging the link between national productions of pharmaceuticals and the SUS network management. There is also a strong official investment in medicine distribution through the program Aqui tem Farmácia Popular (Here there is a Popular Drugstore). This policy will have an impact on the Health budget and on the process of carrying out Programa "Mais Saúde": Direito de Todos 2008 - 2011 (More Health Program - Everyone's right 2008-2011), based on practices structured in seven different axes with a defined purpose: "To articulate the economic and social dimensions of healthcare". The main hypothesis of analysis evaluates whether the profile of these new "integrator axes" works as interactive faces of a "management pact" which includes medicine offers. The secondary hypothesis evaluates whether the network principle has an operational link with the Healthcare Industrial Complex axis. The conclusions suggest that the concept of "demand prediction" was not included in the network management logic, especially when healthcare is thought of as not composing an "imperfect market". In addition, the study identified, in the new medicine policy, that priority was given to the conception of an interorganizational network, preserving dependency among levels, without incentive to the decentralization of the decision making processes.
management network; management agreement; Brazil's National Health System; Medicine Programme