Ensuring affordable access to novel medicines has been identified as a policy priority among OECD and EU countries, yet systematic monitoring of the various dimensions of access is lacking. Previous efforts to measure access have focused primarily on one or at most two of these dimensions, such...

The 2018 OECD report Pharmaceutical Innovation and Access to Medicines noted that fostering competition in both on- and off-patent markets can improve the efficiency of pharmaceutical spending. Various policies are used to promote competition among off-patent medicines, but generally do not...

The 2018 OECD report Pharmaceutical Innovation and Access to Medicines noted that public debates about pharmaceutical policy are often marked by a lack of authoritative and commonly accepted information supporting the arguments of the stakeholders involved. A set of agreed indicators would...

Durch ungeeignete Arzneimitteltherapien und inadäquate Systeminfrastrukturen, die unzureichende Adhärenz, medikationsbedingte Schäden und Medikationsfehler nach sich ziehen, kommen nur allzu oft Patient*innen zu Schaden. Im OECD-Raum ist möglicherweise ein Zehntel der Krankenhauseinweisungen...

In this report – the first of its kind in Canada – we use existing research to assess the impact of inadequate drug coverage on the health and well-being of Canadians. The report finds that hundreds of lives end prematurely each and every year, resulting from the difficulties Canadians...

Even in wealthy economies, access to medicines is increasingly affected by medicine shortages – an issue exacerbated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this paper was to examine the extent and nature of medicine shortages in OECD countries (pre-COVID-19) and explore the...

Poor medication practices and inadequate system infrastructure—resulting in poor adherence, medication-related harms, and medication errors—too often results in patient harm. As many as 1 in 10 hospitalizations in OECD countries may be caused by a medication-related event and as many one in...

For some time, governments, stakeholders and civil society have been voicing the need for greater transparency in pharmaceutical pricing. The 2018 OECD report Pharmaceutical Innovation and Access to Medicines suggested that increased price transparency could promote public accountability, while...

This paper explores Japan’s role in reshaping the global pharmaceutical intellectual property regime by examining its position on the expansion of intellectual property rights (IPR) in negotiations for two regional trade agreements: the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the...