A Decade of Modern Medicines: An International Comparison 2011 – 2020

A Decade of Modern Medicines: An International Comparison 2011 – 2020

In a recent report commissioned by Medicines NZ, an international comparison was made with New Zealand, on the funding of modern medicines. [Nov 2021]

Executive Summary:

[quoted from the report] In this report we compare publicly funded access to modern medicines in New Zealand with publicly funded access to modern medicines in 19 other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, including Australia, Great Britain and 11 European Union countries (the OECD20). Modern medicines are defined herein as: (i) comprising one or more unique molecules, and (ii) having a first registration date between 2011 and 2020. With this list of 441 modern medicines, we have evaluated New Zealand’s access to medicines versus OECD peers, considering the number of medicines funded, the fraction of medicines funded across priority therapy areas and the time from in-country registration to public funding. Across all metrics, we report that New Zealand consistently features as the lowest, or second lowest, ranked country within the comparison.

Key findings are:

Patient access to modern medicines in New Zealand lags most comparable countries

• New Zealand ranks last of 20 OECD countries for the number of publicly funded modern medicines, funding 34 compared to 120 in Australia, 183 Finland, and 251 in Great Britain. • New Zealand lags other OECD20 countries in publicly funding modern medicines across priority therapy areas: no modern arthritis or diabetes medicines were publicly funded between 2011 and 2020, and New Zealand publicly funded fewer modern medicines for cardiovascular disease and hepatitis C than all the other OECD20 countries; Portugal was the only country in the comparison to have funded fewer modern medicines for cancer and rare diseases than New Zealand.

• Less than 30% of the modern medicines registered in the OECD20 were registered in New Zealand in the last decade – 131 out of 441 medicines – and only 26% of the medicines which were registered in New Zealand were then publicly funded.

The public funding of modern medicines is significantly slower in New Zealand than in comparable countries

• The average time from in-country registration to public funding in New Zealand exceeded two years in the decade 2011-2020, almost double the average for the 20 OECD countries, and the second longest time amongst the OECD20 countries. • Concerningly, of the modern medicines publicly funded in New Zealand in the period 2018 to 2020, only 34% were funded within two years of registration, compared to over 70% funded within two years of registration in Australia, Italy, Great Britain, Finland, France and Germany.