Weighing the Evidence: Conducting Reviews of Pharmaceuticals in Four Countries

A worldwide discussion is under way on the role of evidence-based medicine in evaluating the relative effectiveness of prescription drugs. Publicly funded health programs, large employers and managed care plans all are working to learn more about how the costs and benefits of one drug compare with those of another. At the same time, these payers of health care want to make sure that their beneficiaries have access to new pharmaceuticals that offer measurable improvements over older products.

What evidence gets reviewed in deciding (or recommending) whether a drug gets covered or not? How open to public scrutiny is the review process? Which stakeholders are most closely involved? Are decisions ever revisited or reversed? How do review methods differ among different countries?

To help examine these questions and others, the Alliance for Health Reform and The Commonwealth Fund co-sponsored an April 22, 2005 briefing. Panelists were: Professor Peter Littlejohns of Great Britain’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence; Dr. Peter Sawicki of the German Institute for Quality and Economic Efficiency; Mark Gibson, representing the Drug Review Effectiveness Project at the Oregon Health and Sciences University; Dr. Marc Berger, vice president of outcomes research and management at Merck and Company, and Dr. Andreas Laupacis of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences at the University of Toronto. Robin Osborn of The Commonwealth Fund moderated the discussion, with Anne Montgomery of the Alliance

Transcript

Full Transcript (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

Speaker Presentations

Mark Gibson (Adobe Acrobat PDF)
Peter Littlejohns (Adobe Acrobat PDF)
Peter Sawicki (Adobe Acrobat PDF)
Andreas Laupacis (Adobe Acrobat PDF)