'Radically different' drug pricing and supply system forecast

The future of medicines pricing and supply will be radically different to what has gone before - and all stakeholders, especially industry and the State, must be ready to embrace change, the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA) told a conference hosted by the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE).

Aidan Lynch, the IPHA’s president, said “the pace of pharmaceutical innovation means that the pricing and supply agreements of the past will not work for the future. The funding requirement to support the introduction of new medicines is going to be greater than the opportunity to save on older medicines.”

“Interchangeability and reference pricing will continue to yield savings but on a diminishing basis. Realignment will realise savings in July. The biosimilars policy, once rolled out, will bring about some efficiencies. However, all of these combined will not cover the cost of new medicines. In many cases, these are old technologies. Their patents have yielded returns that have been invested in creating new innovative medicines that more than likely are not going to be in primary care but in specialty medicine. The old will not fully compensate for the new,” he added.