Medicines Australia seeks answers on AI in HTA process

In an interview with BioPharmaDispatch, Sally Panton, CEO and co-founder of Longevity Life Sciences, described a career built on a conviction in prevention and supporting well people to stay well.

A reference group that consults multiple stakeholders alongside the industry agreement negotiations could be interpreted as a response to the demand for a voice.

"When the gap between registration and reimbursement stretches out over years, it is inevitable that global pricing and market conditions will evolve. This makes it difficult to sustain the pricing assumptions underpinning earlier submissions."

Lilly Australia General Manager Manny Simons said the offering responds directly to the pressures the company faces in securing public reimbursement.

There are questions worth asking, not because AI should not be used, but because the lack of transparency is a problem. We only know this is happening because someone took the trouble to submit a Freedom of Information request.

The health department has put generative AI into the machinery that decides which medicines Australians will fund, and it claims the benefit is doing the same work more thoroughly in the same amount of time. Not faster. Not cheaper. 'Deeper'. So what's the point if only officials benefit?

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has now confirmed that it is using AI in the health technology assessment process without telling sponsors or the industry. It has effectively said that we have asked ourselves if it is ok, and the answer is yes.

The Australian nuclear medicine company has agreed to lead a merger with ITM Isotope Technologies Munich SE, paying US$1.65 billion upfront on a cash-free, debt-free basis for a German company that supplies the raw material the entire targeted radionuclide therapy industry depends on.

The 2026 Intergenerational Report finally concedes that medicines are the slow-growing part of health spending. The reforms justified by the opposite claim remain in place.

The document confirms that officials use AI to support HTA committees by reading, summarising, and helping critically appraise submissions, and by drafting overviews, advice, commentaries, and minutes.

"These results show that the technology works. It also validates our insight that Australian patients want to have their say on medicine access and welcome support to do so," said Boehringer Ingelheim Australia and New Zealand general manager Ed Hollywood.

"There's a revolution going on in healthcare and that produces savings as well to the economy, but importantly as well, better healthcare for Australians," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

We now have evidence of the official Australian response to a more assertive United States posture on medicine prices, and sadly, it concerns women with advanced breast cancer that has spread to their brain.

Australia's HTA committees deny patients a right of reply and independent review that another program guarantees. Until we adopt that standard for decisions made at home, patients may fairly conclude that fairness is only available offshore.

A roadmap launched in Brisbane by a Queensland Cardiovascular Disease Expert Roundtable, convened by Amgen Australia, the Heart Foundation and Springfield Healthy Hearts, aims to close that gap.

New Zealand has fallen to the bottom of a ranking of 17 comparable OECD countries for public funding of modern medicines, according to a new report commissioned by the industry group Medicines New Zealand.

This is an edited version of an address given by the publisher of BioPharmaDispatch and BPDInsights.ai to the Independent Pharmacies of Australia conference in Cairns on Wednesday.

Australians facing incurable, advanced or poor-prognosis cancers will have a clearer path to genomic testing under a new collaboration between cancer care provider GenesisCare and the not-for-profit precision oncology organisation Omico.

"Through the Marie Krogh Prize, we are proud to recognise and invest in women researchers whose work is helping shape the future of healthcare," said Dr Ana Svensson, Senior Director Medical, Novo Oceania.

Two consecutive years of recovery have failed to lift Australia's flu vaccination effort back to 2023 levels, let alone to where health authorities want it.