Details descriptions of the session:
Healthcare systems in both high and low- and middle-income countries face pressure to fund high-cost new branded pharmaceuticals. Health technology assessment (HTA) and, in particular, cost-effectiveness analysis, can be used to inform decisions around whether new pharmaceuticals should be approved and funded by national healthcare systems. However, conventional cost-effectiveness analysis fails on three counts: health opportunity costs are not reflected in the cost-effectiveness threshold, which instead merely represents an approval norm; it does not typically assess the long-term value of branded pharmaceuticals; and finally, it is insufficient to inform a sharing of this value in a way that balances the competing concerns for encouraging innovation and ensuring affordability.
To address these issues, recent work in the UK developed a framework and estimated the share of value currently being given to manufacturers and what the optimal share should be. This sheds light on the value that the current combination of pricing policy and intellectual patent protection brings to the healthcare system, and how these policies could be optimized while taking account of implications for future innovation.
This work has potential implications for global pricing and access, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), home to 84% of the global population and an ever expanding share of the healthcare market. Research underway in Thailand is assessing the share of value currently being given to manufacturers there using a sample of new, branded pharmaceuticals recently assessed for inclusion in the National List of Essential Medicines.
This session presents the evidence from the UK and Thailand alongside the perspective of manufacturers. It explores the implications of new research for informing a more effective and explicit pricing/reward mechanism, drawing on HTA estimates of long-term value and independent assessment of health opportunity costs to establish the appropriate level of reward, which could be delivered in a number of ways.
Learning objectives and target audience:
Policy makers and HTA practitioners will come away with
- an understanding of how share of value is currently being given to manufacturers and what the optimal share should be determined,
- a view of the existing distribution of value between Thai patients and manufacturers, and
- an understanding of the manufacturer perspective.
Structure of presentation:
- Presentation 1 – Conceptual framework and how it applies to Thailand – Jessica Ochalek (15 mins)
– Questions for clarification (5 mins) - Presentation 2 – Results from our work – Francis Carlo Panlilio (15 mins)
– Questions for clarification (5 mins) - Presentation 3 Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, Thailand (15 mins)
– Questions for clarification (5 mins) - Q&A (15 mins)