Artificial intelligence in HTA has arrived, kind of, but nobody was thinking of this

Two accounts of how the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee weighs patient and clinician voices arrived within weeks of each other, and they do not sit comfortably together.

After twelve years steering the Private Cancer Physicians of Australia through some of the most consequential fights in Australian cancer policy, Christopher Steer has handed the presidency to Cameron McLaren.

A Sydney company has become the first in Australia to earn a manufacturing licence for viral vectors, a milestone it says strengthens the nation's capacity to make advanced gene and cell therapies at home rather than relying on overseas suppliers.

We live in a wealthy country where this situation has been allowed to persist. Responsibility is not shared equally. Those with the authority to design, operate and change the system carry a greater obligation than the rest of us.

Among the patient advocates, parliamentarians and pharmaceutical executives who gathered in Canberra on Tuesday for the fifth annual Patient and Parliament Summit, organised by Bristol Myers Squibb, no politician delivered the sharpest verdict on the state of Australia's medicines system. It was a journalist.

Our AI Health Summit is two months away. Normally, that would feel close. Yet in the world of artificial intelligence, it increasingly feels like a planning horizon.

Australia's national powerchair football team, the Poweroos, is heading to Buenos Aires this October with Biogen in its corner. 

A plan built around expanding the traditional evaluator pipeline, without first testing what AI can absorb, risks locking in permanent headcount and cost against a workload that may shrink or radically change.

The Summit, supported by Bristol Myers Squibb, approaches a potential flashpoint, as a new survey reveals growing frustration among patient groups.

More than a quarter of a million Australians are still carrying the physical and emotional weight of a rare or less common cancer, some of them two decades after their diagnosis, according to a new report from Rare Cancers Australia.

The modelling, carried out by HTAnalysts, found that allowing trained pharmacists to manage consultations for the pill and other hormonal contraceptives would remove the need for around 730,000 GP visits every year.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of former health minister Greg Hunt's announcement that Australia would conduct a review of health technology assessment.

A government could announce a target tomorrow. Australia will aim to invest 0.7 per cent of GDP in medicines by 2036–37. It could include that objective in an industry agreement, an innovation strategy or a Budget statement. None of those would make it happen.

Where the US has, albeit messily, built parallel pathways into Medicare and Medicaid, Australia's single-payer system has so far failed to produce even a recommendation beyond a relatively small cohort of very unwell people. 

This week's discussion starts with the perfect example of why pulling one lever can trigger another. The Senate is considering changes to expand the regulator's power, without any submissions from those most affected. Is it possible to have a common-sense discussion about tobacco excise against the backdrop of an unrelenting crime wave with mounting numbers of innocent victims? Or can those not impacted by the consequences just turn the other cheek? Sound familiar?

The three discrete reforms give the Commonwealth, through the TGA and the Health Department Secretary, greater capacity to demand information, classify biologicals in groups, and exercise warrantless enforcement powers at clinical trial sites.

The Secretary could vary the definition of 'common characteristics', use their new powers to establish a biological group, and Parliament would have no review rights. Yet the inquiry into this significant expansion of power did not hear directly from the industry.

A new report from Medicines Australia argues that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is buckling under a 'twin threat' that could soon tip from crisis-in-waiting to full-blown emergency.

The near-term test is whether reform meets the review's originally stated objective of modernising and accelerating access to new medicines and other health technologies. That outcome cannot be separated from the institutional response. Can any beneficial reforms hold? The United Kingdom offers a timely example of the risks.

Gilead Australia and New Zealand general manager Arthur Miritis said the move reflects both the company’s commercial interests and a broader policy argument about the conditions needed to bring new treatments to Australian patients.