UK and US to share medicines efficacy data
Evidence of how well different medicines work is to be shared internationally between the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the US.
Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of NICE, announced last week that the two
organisations are to develop a joint database so that they can decide
what medicines limited national funds can best be spent on. Later, Mark
McLellan, head of the US Medicare/Medicaid programmes, confirmed on Radio
4’s Today programme: “We are taking steps now and working
with the UK to try to develop better evidence on what treatments work
really well.”
Professor Rawlins made the announcement during a debate held at the Oxford
Union on a motion that government price controls do not lead to affordable,
innovative medicines and better health.
Dr McLellan proposed the motion and argued that price controls mean that
pharmaceutical companies do not make enough money to search for new medicines.
“Unless someone pays for the research, we will not get any improvement
in health,” he said. Free pricing means that US consumers pay half
the worldwide research bill, he added.
Professor Rawlins opposed the motion, saying that medicines could not
follow normal market economics because in most cases one person decides
what medicine to use, another takes the treatment and somebody else pays.
“The payer would be mad not to have some influence over the other
two,” he
said. In the US, price controls are exerted by health maintenance organisations
and pharmaceutical benefits’ managers who negotiate price deals
with manufacturers and threaten not to use their drugs unless the price
is right, he added.
In the UK, prices were influenced through the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation
Scheme, which the industry admits does not inhibit research.
The motion was defeated by 97 votes to 74. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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