Posted by Michael Wonder on 20 Feb 2019
New drug landscape dominated by high cost medicines
19 February 2019 - The Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, through the National Prescription Drug Utilization Information System research initiative, today published the 2017 edition of Meds Entry Watch, an annual publication that provides the latest information on new medicines entering Canadian and international markets.
This edition examines the availability, sales, uptake, pricing, and treatment costs of new medicines approved by the US FDA, the EMA, and/or Health Canada in 2016 and 2017, and provides a look at trends since 2009. It also includes a one-time retrospective analysis of new biosimilars approved between 2006 and 2017.
The report found that the number of new medicines launched in Canada is generally in line with the average for the Organisation for Economic Development, but less than that of all seven of the PMPRB comparator countries, even though most of them have lower average patented medicine prices. Almost all of the new medicines came with high treatment costs and many were specialty drugs such as biologic, orphan, and cancer medicines.
