The Pathway for New Cancer Drug Access in Canada.

Cancer treatment has evolved significantly over the past decade with the emergence of a multitude of new treatments across cancer types. Alongside the pace of drug discovery, the cost of cancer drugs has also increased. In the face of this growth in development and spending, it is crucial to have an understanding of the processes and pressures new drugs navigate to get to the market in Canada. This paper is a review of the complex, multi-step regulatory and funding process undertaken by cancer drugs in Canada. It reviews the role of Health Canada, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, the Health Technology Assessment, the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance, and finally, the provincial, territorial, and federal payers. Recent developments are highlighted. Strategies to minimize duplication of effort, improve timeliness, and increase efficiency are explored. The cancer drug regulatory and funding process in Canada is complex, and an understanding of the current system and ongoing evolution is essential.

Evolution of drug reimbursement in Canada: the Pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance for new drugs.

Canada has a unique system of public drug coverage and reimbursement characterized by a centralized review agency that makes funding recommendations along with decentralized authority for delivering health care across 10 provinces and three territories. There has been a significant increase in price negotiation for new pharmaceuticals in the past 10 years, first by individual provinces and now through a collective price negotiation process called the "Pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance." As of February 2014, the Pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance has already completed 32 negotiations despite still being in a formative stage; it is anticipated that a formal process will be developed in the coming year. In this article, we describe the evolution of price negotiation in Canada and identify several opportunities for improvement of the current process, including the incorporation of economic considerations into price negotiation.