by Richard Staines
LONDON, Dec 1 (APM) - The influence of Germany’s AMNOG pricing system alone is not enough to explain the country’s slide down rankings for use of new branded drugs, while in the UK the cancer drugs fund may have influenced performance, a pharma trade body said.
Even though AMNOG has caused several drug companies to pull products from the market because they failed to attract a high enough price, David Watson, pricing and reimbursement director at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), suggested other factors could also influence uptake of new drugs, speaking to APM on Friday.
Germany fell from seventh in 2009-10 to tenth in 2012-13 in the ranking compiled by Office of Health Economics on behalf of the ABPI. (APMMA 40607)
In a telephone interview, Watson told APM: “AMNOG is more about pricing and I don’t think it explains the drop in performance.
“It is possible for some countries to become healthier so demand for some types of medicine is lower.
“Maybe the population is becoming more healthy and demand is down. It is not down to price alone.”
Watson said that the UK, like other countries had greatly varied performance depending on disease area.
The UK was ranked fourth out of 13 for use of statins, Watson noted. It was also fourth for use of older cancer drugs approved more than 10 years before the report was compiled.
The UK also jumped from eleventh to seventh for use of cancer drugs approved within five years of compilation.
Watson said was down to the influence of the cancer drugs fund, which pays for drugs that are rejected on cost effectiveness grounds by NICE.
He said: “There is no doubt the cancer drugs fund influenced this in some cases. But the cancer drugs fund is a political sticking plaster for the fundamental issue that NICE is not able to assess cancer medicines properly," he argued.
Overall the UK’s patchy performance was not just down to NICE, but also because prescribers in the country are inherently conservative and favour older, more established drugs, Watson said.
“We have ongoing issues not only with NICE but there is an element of conservatism (amongst clinicians).
“It is one of the more conservative countries in Europe and this prevails throughout the data.”
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