Posted by Michael Wonder on 09 Oct 2017
Time for a change in how new antibiotics are reimbursed: development of an insurance framework for funding new antibiotics based on a policy of risk mitigation
9 October 2017 - Healthcare systems depend on the availability of new antibiotics.
However, there is a lack of treatments for infections caused by multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogens and a weak development pipeline of new therapies. One core challenge to the development of new antibiotics targeting MDR pathogens is that expected revenues are insufficient to drive long-term investment. In the USA and Europe, financial incentives have focussed on supporting R&D, reducing regulatory burden, and extending market exclusivity. Using resistance data to estimate global revenues, we demonstrate that the combined effects of these incentives are unlikely to rekindle investment in antibiotics.
We analyse two supplemental approaches: a commercial incentive (a premium price model) and a new business model (an insurance model).
