AI in HTA - survey reveals optimism and concern over a potential missed opportunity

In a discussion with BioPharmaDispatch, Professor Hill said the starting point was a set of management questions she put to the chief executives of major teaching hospitals. What can you stop doing, how can you re-engineer pathways, and how can you do things earlier?

Biogen's Australian and New Zealand business has been certified as a Great Place to Work for the fifth time. Employees rated the company above the benchmark on most measures of fair treatment at work.

The withdrawal follows a series of regulatory actions overseas centred on the drug's pivotal ADVOCATE trial and a growing liver-injury safety signal.

Albert Hirschman argued that voice works only when exit is credible. For 80 years, the pharmaceutical industry has had voice without exit, and the PBS has had little reason to listen. The private market finally gives the industry somewhere else to go. The question is whether it will use it.

Up to 600,000 Australian children live with a rare disease or a profound or severe disability, and for about half of them, there is no approved medicine or therapy in Australia.

A year ago, Professor Richard Scolyer, who was living with glioblastoma, stood in Parliament House in Canberra and urged Australia to do for brain cancer what it had done for advanced melanoma.

Parliament briefly debated the legislative framework for PBS decision-making almost 40 years ago. Since then, the system has steadily developed and implemented pricing reforms. There has been little meaningful reform of how medicines are assessed.

Chad Rieger, Head of Medical Affairs and Policy for Australia and New Zealand at Sandoz, argues that Australia needs a deliberate national biosimilar strategy, starting with lower patient copayments, so savings from off-patent biologics can fund broader access and the next generation of medicines.

Priceline Pharmacy will be front and centre when the Australian Diamonds take the court in New Zealand on Sunday, after the company was named Principal Partner of one of Australia's most successful women's sporting teams.

VVMF chief executive Stephen Thompson said, "We are pleased to be working with Peter Mac to evaluate the manufacturability of this AAV-based candidate and generate the process and analytical data required to inform its future development."

GBMA chief executive Nikki Lorenz, who took on the role in April, joined the International Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Association delegation for meetings with the WHO and the WTO in Geneva.

Since 2022–23, Commonwealth spending per person, adjusted for inflation and population, has risen 9.6 per cent on Medicare, 12.5 per cent on public hospitals, 24.4 per cent on the NDIS and 31.6 per cent on aged care. Net spending per person on the PBS fell 13.1 per cent.

New Zealand medicine maker AFT Pharmaceuticals says it remains on track to hit its NZ$300 million revenue target for the 2027 financial year after every division posted double-digit revenue growth in the first half.

A white paper released today, Building a Future of Life-Saving Clinical Trials for Children with Cancer, shows that Australian children with cancer do not have the same chances as adults to access clinical trials and emerging treatments. 

Health Minister Mark Butler said, “Earlier recognition and diagnosis can make an important difference for children living with juvenile arthritis, helping them access the specialist care and treatment they need sooner."

Real net spending per person fell 3.8 per cent in 2023–24, 4.8 per cent in 2024–25 and an estimated 5.2 per cent in 2025–26. The fall is accelerating. Based on population and inflation alone, this creates a funding shortfall of about $1.9 billion a year, or almost $8 billion by the end of this decade.

In 2026, it is approaching one dollar in every four, or 25 per cent of the market. That is not the over 100 million PBS prescriptions that attract no subsidy. It is the private market that exists outside the PBS framework.

How will the Government and institutions respond? Instinctively, they will probably want to shut it down. Practically, that seems unlikely. The one certainty is that any concession to its realities will be reluctant and take time.

Intelligence firm Nostradata, which collects data from more than 90 per cent of Australian community pharmacies, reports that about 1.6 million people have accessed a GLP-1 medicine privately in the past 12 months, creating a market with a value of around $2.3 billion a year and growing.