Comment

The nature of 'positioning' and being 'positioned' is one of the main challenges any stakeholder group will face in dealing with policy-makers on reform.

The Coalition gave itself a nine-month window from the election to launch the review, so there is plenty of time, and stakeholders will likely prefer to wait if it means the sector has resolved other potential distractions from what could be a generational opportunity for the biopharmaceutical and wider therapeutics sector.

Is the demand seriously that companies provide everything potentially relevant coming from their clinical trials? Or, to be cynical, is the requested change to process limited to trial outcomes supporting efforts to secure price reductions?

It is inevitable the government and its policy-makers will apply an increasing level of scrutiny to the economics of how PBS medicines navigate hospital supply chains.

A new report has described current approaches to health technology assessment and the application cost-effectiveness to emerging technologies like gene therapies as "obsolete" and "theological dogma".

A medical oncologist in New Zealand may have captured the fundamental problem with the PBS and PHARMAC this week - using one simple phrase.

AbbVie HR Director Sue Jennings writes about the importance of workplace flexibility and the need for companies to 'just get on and do it'. 

How long will it take the Department of Finance to question the reimbursement of non-facilitated medicines? If a new medicine does not provide a substantial clinical benefit and does not address an unmet need, why should it be reimbursed in a timely fashion, or at all? This discussion inside government is inevitable.

The recent push for a 'transparency' resolution at the World Health Assembly appears to have forced Australia to take a partial stand in defence of confidential prices.

According to the former PBAC member, "Being on the committee and looking at opportunity costs has really opened my eyes to that – if you fund this [treatment or medication] you can’t fund that, you really have to prioritise."

Should we accept the current underpinnings of PBS decision-making, such as health technology assessment and cost-effectiveness, or do these concepts need to be challenged given the emergence of new technologies, convergence and personalised medicine?

If our current system of health technology assessment is incapable of properly incorporating consumer preferences into its decision-making - then the system is the problem and arguably needs to be fixed.