Europe must move on from ‘simplistic’ pricing
pharmafile | June 22, 2010 | News story | Research and Development | Europe, hta, pricing, pricing & Reimbursement
GSK chief executive Andrew Witty has called on European governments to scrap outdated pricing systems and embrace newer methods, in order to improve patient care and reward innovation.
Witty is also president of European pharma association EFPIA, and is trying to take a proactive approach and encourage new pricing and reimbursement systems.
He took aim at reference pricing systems, which are widely used by governments across the continent, but are a blunt tool to control prices of newer drugs.
Perhaps the most notable example of this is Germany, which has used reference pricing since 1989, and categorises new drugs into broad therapeutic groups in order to suppress prices.
Witty says this approach clearly doesn’t make sense when a country also uses more ‘sophisticated’ methods such as health technology assessment (HTA) as practiced by the UK’s NICE and Germany’s IQWIG.
“What is the point of carrying out various complex HTA assessments if it is then trumped by a decision that says we will adopt the lowest of three comparator prices?”
Speaking at EFPIA’s annual conference in London, Witty made it clear he favoured ‘relative efficacy assessment’ to assess the therapeutic value of medicines.
“If relative effectiveness is going to be the definite focus [in the future] then we have to recognise that some of these other methods that we have used are redundant or even contradict relative effectiveness,” he said.
Witty shared the podium with NICE Chairman Prof Sir Michael Rawlins, EMA Director General Thomas Lönngren and Nils Behrndt, deputy head of cabinet at the European Commission.’
The EMA’s Thomas Lönngren expressed his support for a project to harmonise HTA and relative efficacy assessments in Europe, even suggesting that his agency was best placed to take on this role.
Many in the industry fear the creation of a ‘Euro NICE’, but Lönngren stressed that he was not proposing the creation of a new body, merely harmonisation of methods, and that any assessment would be separate from marketing approval.
He also made it clear that any decision on relative efficacy would be a political one, a point agreed on by NICE’s Prof Sir Michael Rawlins.
Prof Rawlins expressed deep scepticism about the chances of creating a European standard approach, citing what he called ‘irresolvable member state issues’.
“I don’t think this will be resolved in my life time,” he concluded.
Andrew Witty also made it clear that the industry had to think differently as well. In particular he stressed the need to make a firm commitment to real innovation, and said drugs which were “just one molecule different” from their predecessors should not be part of the future, and were “meaningless to all our customers”.
At the same time, he hinted that HTA systems should be approached with caution, and warned against health economic assessments which asked “unanswerable” questions of new medicines.
Andrew McConaghie
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