Some New Ideas for Cancer Drug Pricing
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center doctors have come up with a cancer drug pricing calculator called DrugAbacus in a challenge to the pharmaceutical industry to come up with a more rational pricing formula. Their calculator suggests giving increases and reductions to a cancer drug’s value, and therefore, its pricing according to the following factors:
- How much do patients benefit from the treatment?
- How difficult are the treatment’s side effects?
- Is the treatment for a rare disease?
- Does the treatment address a large public health burden?
- Is the treatment using a novel or new mechanism?
- Did the treatment cost a lot to discover or develop?
You can find more about this at http://www.drugabacus.org/
You can read a full description of the above action in a Wall Street Journal article entitled “How Much Should Cancer Drugs Cost?” found at http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-should-cancer-drugs-cost-1434640914?KEYWORDS=peter+bach
Dr. Peter Bach led the group to come up with this suggested approach to pricing. In an interview, Dr. Bach said prices for many new cancer drugs don’t reflect their value to doctors and patients. “Right now, manufacturers have total price control, and total control of prices has led to irrational pricing behaviors,” he said.”
Daniel Goldstein, a medical oncologist at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University is quoted in the same article as saying, “Currently cancer drug prices aren’t linked to the benefit they provide. They’re currently priced on what the market can bear, which is an unsustainable system.”
It will be interesting to hear Pharma responses to this challenge to their pricing methods for cancer drugs.
Contractors at Real Endpoints, a drug-cost analysis firm, and engineers from the software firm NetQuarry helped develop the Drug Abacus.
Upcoming Bay Area Meetings This Coming Week
- GGPF, Monday Evening, June 22, 2015; Event: Dinner lecture: “Materials for Enabling Nanomanufacturing,” Speaker: Alshakim Nelson, University of Washington & IBM Almaden Research Labs
- Bio2Device Group, Tuesday Morning, June 23, 2015; Topic: “Sports Analytics & the Future of Wearables,” Speaker: Avery Lu, Co-Founder & CM), Palo Alto Scientific
- Rosenman Institute, Wednesday Afternoon, June 24, 2015; Topic: “How Precision Medicine is Transforming Medical Devices;” Speakers: Zachary Bogue, Co-Managing Partner, Data Collective; Edward Chang, MD, Professor in Residence, Neurological Surgery & Phy6siology, UCSF; Christine Leong Connors, Managing Director, JPMorgan Chase; Eric David, MD, JD, Chief Strategy Officer, Organovo; Regis Kelly, PhD, OBE, Special Advisor to the President on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of California, and Director, QB3; Richard Klausner, MD, Senior VP and CMO, Illumina; Juan-Pablo Mas, Partner, Action Potential Venture Capital; Casey McGlynn, Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Campbell Rogers, MD, CMO, Heartflow; Bruce Rosengard, MD, PhD, CTO, Global Surgery, Johnson & Johnson
- BioScience Forum, Wednesday Evening, June 24, 2015; Topic: “The CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing Revolution;” Speaker: Jacob Corn, Ph.D., Scientific Director, Innovative Genomics Initiative, UC Berkeley
- Band of Angels, Thursday Afternoon, June 25, 2015; Event: “Mentor Day for Startups”
- The 23rd Annual Medical Device Dinner and Next Day Conference, Thursday and Friday, June 25-26, 2015
- Medical Device Dinner And Interview with Steve Blank, Thursday June 25, 2015, 6:00 – 9:00 pm, Location: Sharon Heights Golf and Country Club, 2900 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA
- 23rd Annual Medical Device Conference, Date and Time: June 26, 2015, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm, Location: Palace Hotel 2 New Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA
You can download Audreys Picks June 21, 2015 with complete details on the above and other meetings and conferences through Dec. 2015 by right clicking on the highlighted titles. JobsThatCrossedMyDeskThrough June 21, 2015 is also provided.
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