Assessing the Consequences of External Reference Pricing for Global Access to Medicines and Innovation: Economic Analysis and Policy Implications

The impact of changing the reference countries on the list prices for patented medicines in Canada: A policy analysis

BACKGROUND

Canada's Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) uses external and internal reference pricing (IRP) to regulate patented drug list prices. PMPRB has changed external reference countries from 7 to 11 to include countries with prices closer to the OECD median. We examined the impact on the list prices for patented medicines had the amendment been implemented from 2013.

METHODS

Using IQVIA MIDAS® quarterly sales data, we selected branded products that were launched in Canada in 2013-2018. The list price for each product in each country was calculated as its average annual price during the 3rd year post Canadian launch. The median international price (MIP) was the median of the list prices of PMPRB7 (MIP7) and PMPRB11 (MIP11). We assumed the same IRP would be (scenario 1) or would not be used (scenario 2).

RESULTS

Among the selected 400 products, 80.3 % (321) had MIP7 and MIP11 (launched in at least one reference country); 18.3 % did not have MIP11. The total current expenditures were $7,134.4 M. In scenario 1, MIP11 would not be binding for most products and expenditures would decline only by 0.7 %. If IRP were abolished, expenditures might decline by 14.1 % if the launching sequence would not change.

CONCLUSIONS

MIP11 might not be binding for most medicines. The impact depends on whether to retain the IRP and approaches taken for medicines without MIP11.

Artificial Intelligence to Automate Health Economic Modelling: A Case Study to Evaluate the Potential Application of Large Language Models

BACKGROUND

Current generation large language models (LLMs) such as Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) have achieved human-level performance on many tasks including the generation of computer code based on textual input. This study aimed to assess whether GPT-4 could be used to automatically programme two published health economic analyses.

METHODS

The two analyses were partitioned survival models evaluating interventions in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC). We developed prompts which instructed GPT-4 to programme the NSCLC and RCC models in R, and which provided descriptions of each model's methods, assumptions and parameter values. The results of the generated scripts were compared to the published values from the original, human-programmed models. The models were replicated 15 times to capture variability in GPT-4's output.

RESULTS

GPT-4 fully replicated the NSCLC model with high accuracy: 100% (15/15) of the artificial intelligence (AI)-generated NSCLC models were error-free or contained a single minor error, and 93% (14/15) were completely error-free. GPT-4 closely replicated the RCC model, although human intervention was required to simplify an element of the model design (one of the model's fifteen input calculations) because it used too many sequential steps to be implemented in a single prompt. With this simplification, 87% (13/15) of the AI-generated RCC models were error-free or contained a single minor error, and 60% (9/15) were completely error-free. Error-free model scripts replicated the published incremental cost-effectiveness ratios to within 1%.

CONCLUSION

This study provides a promising indication that GPT-4 can have practical applications in the automation of health economic model construction. Potential benefits include accelerated model development timelines and reduced costs of development. Further research is necessary to explore the generalisability of LLM-based automation across a larger sample of models.

Negotiating public-health intellectual property licensing agreements to increase access to health technologies: an insider's story

Public health voluntary licensing of intellectual property has successfully been applied to increase access to medicines in certain disease areas, producing health benefits and economic savings, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries. There is however limited understanding of the intricacies of the approach, the modalities by which it works in practice, its levers and the trade-offs made. Such knowledge may be critical in deciding what role licensing should have in pandemic preparedness and equitable access to health technologies more broadly. This paper examines the case for licensing, the considerations for balancing public health needs, the challenges of negotiations, and the processes for validating proposed agreements. No access mechanism is perfect, but evidence suggests that public-health licensing has an important role to play, although it remains underused. Understanding some of the realities, strengths, limitations and complexities of applying the model may help calibrate expectations and develop incentives to expand its applications.

An Industry Survey on Unmet Needs in South Korea's New Drug Listing System

INTRODUCTION

Since introducing the positive listing system in 2007, the South Korean government has undergone multiple changes in its drug listing system. As there is a lack of studies that evaluate the system from an industry perspective, this paper examined South Korea's new drug listing system from the suppliers' perspective.

METHODS

We surveyed members of the three main pharmaceutical industry associations online. The survey (a 5-point Likert scale) covered their satisfactory levels, demands, and updates on the current new drug listing system, especially pharmacoeconomic evaluation, pharmacoeconomic evaluation exemption, and risk-sharing agreement.

RESULTS

A total of 56 respondents participated in the survey. The self-reported satisfaction level for value recognition of new drugs was 1.6 (± 0.7) points (5 points = very satisfied). The most highly demanded reforms for PE, RSA, and PEE were incremental cost-effectiveness ratio threshold (92.9%), reimbursement scope expansion (91.1%), and eligible disease (83.9%). Lastly, they also claimed that the indication-based pricing system must be introduced (83.9%).

CONCLUSIONS

Pricing and reimbursement policies need to improve in such a way that would enable better access to new drugs while still facilitating their development. Given the nature of the current system, some innovative rare disease treatments and anticancer drugs remain unreimbursed, resulting in low satisfaction levels across the pharmaceutical industry. Hence, pathways to speed up the reimbursement assessment process and expand the range of reimbursable diseases are required. Pharmaceutical companies are also important stakeholders, like in the case of clinicians and patients, and their opinions should also be considered in the process of pricing and reimbursement policy reforms.

How does external reference pricing work in developing countries: evidence from Iran

Introduction: Governments apply different pricing policies to ensure public accessibility, availability, and affordability of medicines. In this way, external reference pricing (ERP) because of its easy implementation is used widely across countries. However, ERP is completely path dependent, and it would both bring pros and cons, related to its implementing strategy which makes understanding of its impact in different countries challenging. In this study, we examine the performance of the ERP approach in Iran as a pricing tool. Method: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study. Although Iran officially uses a reference country basket for ERP, in this study, we use different reference countries based on socioeconomic comparability, access to their price data, medicine pricing approaches, and pharmaceutical expenditure to examine the effect of reference countries as well as the method performance. Then, an empirical study was applied to a list of selected samples of medicines in the Iranian market to compare their price with our new reference countries. Then, we discuss the performance of ERP process based on the real prices in the Iranian pharmaceutical market. Result: The prices of 57 medicines, which contain about 69.2% of the imported Iran pharma market in value, were compared with their prices in selected reference countries. It was found that 49.1% of prices were more expensive in at least one of the reference countries, and in 21% of products, the average price in Iran was higher than the average price in reference countries. Conclusion: Achieving efficient and fair pricing of pharmaceuticals between and within countries is still a complex conceptual and policy problem that ERP in short term can handle. ERP cannot be considered a perfect tool for pricing alone, although its effectiveness is acceptable. It is expected that using other pricing methods alongside the ERP will improve patients' access to medicines. In Iran, we use value base pricing as the main pricing method for every new molecule. Then, we use other methods such as ERP as a complementary method.

Value-Based Pricing for Patent-Protected Medicines Over the Product Life Cycle: Pricing Anomalies in the "Age of Cures" and Their Implications for Dynamic Efficiency

OBJECTIVES

Conventional cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) for the value-based pricing of new medicines largely ignores the implications of limited market exclusivity (ie, patent-protection periods plus any exclusivity granted by regulators). This paper explores the implications of this methodological shortcoming, which produces several pricing anomalies with potentially unintended effects on research and development (R&D) incentives.

METHODS

We illustrate these implications by comparing 4 stylized examples of increasing complexity, from short-term cures for acute conditions to long-term cures for rare, health-catastrophic conditions.

RESULTS

(1) Conventional-CEA will project a different result than an adjusted CEA that considers generic or biosimilar entry; (2) free and flexible pricing of long-term treatments (eg, statins for hypercholesterolemia) or repeated-dose cures (eg, insulin for type 1 diabetes) for chronic conditions will likely result in predictable price increases at the end of the exclusivity period that may be perceived as unjustified or unsupported; and (3) one-time administration "cures" (eg, gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy) have the potential to allocate a large share of the social surplus to the manufacturer over the product lifetime, which may or may not be dynamically efficient per se, but may also inadvertently disadvantage the development of valuable long-term treatments or repeated-dose cures for chronic conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

We highlight the need for additional research on long-term solutions to these issues that would aim to promote dynamically efficient global R&D. More work is needed on the following: (1) relationships between social surplus allocation and the amount and composition of global R&D, as we may be as likely to be encouraging excessive R&D in some areas as to be undersupplying it in others; and (2) relating the size of the surplus reward to R&D cost and, thus, the return on investment.

Cell and gene therapy regulatory, pricing, and reimbursement framework: With a focus on South Korea and the EU

Ever since relevant bioengineering technologies have sufficiently matured to the platformizable commercialization stage, a slew of money has flocked to the cell and gene therapy market over the last few years, resulting in an abundance of clinical studies in the field. Newer modalities have brought up a string of regulatory and legislative tasks, such as developing guidelines and legislative rules to systematically regulate newer pharmaceutical products. Accordingly, another layer of legislation and guidelines tailored for cell and gene therapies has been introduced and is expected to evolve on par with technological progress. Furthermore, authorities have shifted to pricing and reimbursement policies that can share risks for cost and outcome among stakeholders altogether, such as developers and the government, while expanding the accessibility of patients to innovative cell and gene therapies. This review attempts to capture the salient regulatory features of the cell and gene therapy market in the context of South Korea and the European Union and points out where two sovereign entities currently stand on each policy element and how each tackles regulatory challenges. We can observe the converging trend where regulatory, pricing and reimbursement rules of adjoining countries in the supranational union or member countries of a consortium are getting more aligned. Evidently, concerted efforts to share regulatory science knowledge and embrace reference pricing have played their parts. The authors argue that policy priorities should be placed on initiatives to harmonize with other medical authorities to better the rights of patients and clear out the uncertainties of developers, ultimately to share and advance regulatory science and layout forward-looking policies at opportune times.