Challenges and opportunities in New Zealand’s
pharmaceutical scene
Kevin Sheehy – Chief Executive, Medicines New Zealand
Dalton Kelly – Chief Executive, New Zealand Cancer Society
Assoc. Prof. Ken Whyte – University of Auckland Medical School
Medicines Access: Looking ahead
Kevin Sheehy
General Manager
Medicines New Zealand
Opportunities for better health of patients are a challenge for
funders
Clinical Research
It’s about improving healthcare
Understanding
people’s needs
Research
and
clinical
trials
Living longer
with better
quality
How do we sustain this improvement in
healthcare?
Medicines Access: Looking ahead
Opportunities
Personalised medicine
Integrated decision making a complex problem
Medicine pipeline developments
Challenging demographics
Ageing population – degenerative illness
Later retirement
Funding challenges
Personalised medicine
“Genetics plays an important role in most diseases: cancer, obesity, diabetes,
cardiovascular, neurologic and psychiatric diseases. All of medicine.” - Professor of Genetics
at Harvard Medical School and first Scientific Director of the Harvard Medical School-Partners
HealthCare Center for Genetics and Genomics Dr. Raju Kucherlapati
Throat swabs or genetic tests

Each have the ability to better target treatment

Require integrated decision making (discussion between the budget silos)
Many new treatments are expensive to develop
but
can improve cost effectiveness by treating those who respond best
Integrated decision making
Contributing to New Zealand’s economic prosperity
Savings vs improved health
Include costs not currently considered
Back to work
Cost of disease to society
Compare to other health interventions
Ministry work commencing
Better understand value proposition
Medicine pipeline developments
Over 20 new medicines per year registered by FDA





Cancer
Immunology
Virology
Metabolic diseases
Neurology
Biologics
Increasing development complexity and costs
New indications
Medicine pipeline developments cont
Old
Model
New
Model
One chemist
One week
One molecule
One chemist
One computer
One robot
One week
10,000 Molecules
Challenging demographics
Age related illness

Non Communicable Diseases

Heart, brain, metabolic, cancer
Ageing effect dominant reason for increasing cancer
Over 65s increasing by 4000 people per month
Retiring later?
R&D improving treatments
e.g. Biologicals for rheumatoid arthritis
Funding challenges
Medicine =
medical device =
Surgery ?
But they are all fruit!
Healthcare investments can and should be compared
Current funding system challenges

Making Named Patient Pharmaceutical Assessment (NPPA)
work

Hospital medicines

Greater transparency/engagement and responsiveness

Measuring performance

Understanding unmet needs
Questions?