Health committee  Yes, and we would be very pleased to try to take that on.

Health committee  We haven't looked into that specifically. Our work was more focused on what are some effective systems to deal with the issue of over-prescribing of some of the drugs of abuse. We looked at initiatives that were under way in Australia, and throughout Europe, etc., and that helped

Health committee  Most of the provinces have moved away from doing the rebates, but all of the price negotiations, the prices that are paid by the provinces through their negotiations of the pCPA, are non-transparent. Those are not publicly available prices.

Health committee  On that, if I may, in Germany they did institute a law on negotiations about four or five years ago. In the German culture, they need to have access. If a physician prescribes a drug, they are entitled to get that drug. For one year after the launch of that drug, it's whatever pr

Health committee  They could be.

Health committee  On generic drugs, let's talk about two separate classes of drugs here, because I think it's important to talk about the biologics and the subsequent entry biologics as well. The chemically synthesized drugs, where scientists and chemists get together and manufacture a drug, are

Health committee  I'll take a crack at that one. We assess the pharmaceutical comparatively. We're looking at product A versus product B. And it's not just on their clinical effectiveness. It also looks at the cost effectiveness. We take into consideration the adverse effects profile, how much mo

Health committee  I don't have the specifics of that case, but there were some drug shortages in some epileptic drugs, and that's probably what the situation was there, which is a significant problem for a number of drug classes, particularly some generic drug classes where there might only be one

Health committee  Perhaps I'll look at the solutions aspect. We're already having negotiations with the provincial drug plan managers as to whether or not we should expand our mandate to start looking at the drugs used in hospitals as well, so that the formularies would be somewhat consistent wit

Health committee  The agency in Quebec is INESSS. We have a good, close working relationship with INESSS. They do similar work to what we do for pharmaceutical reviews. Where Quebec does have a very good system in place is at the hospital level with the hospital formularies and some of the assess

Health committee  We have an office in Ottawa and a smaller office in Toronto. We also have a liaison officer, a staff member, in all of the provinces as well. It kind of gets our eyes and ears on the ground within the ministries.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and like my colleagues, I thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee. I'm Brian O'Rourke, the president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health, and that's the last time I'm going to use the f

Health committee  I wish I had an answer. I think it speaks a lot to the way we deliver health care in this system, with 13 provinces and 6 federal programs for it. That's my personal opinion.

Health committee  There's one program that has started in Ontario, through MaRS actually, and it's referred to as EXCITE. I can't recall what each of the individual letters mean in that acronym, but it's a different way of looking at technology. It's getting the users of the technology, the clinic

Health committee  Those in fact are the types of people who work in our agency and who do the work in our business. I would agree 100% that there is a limited capacity of people with that expertise. I would say as well that what is needed is better collaboration. These are tough decisions. When y