Health committee  I would echo a lot of those comments as well. One of our priorities is in mental health. We do a fair bit of work and review not just of drugs but of newer types of therapy, such as psychological therapies and other social therapies that are helping to both prevent and treat ment

Health committee  If I may, in speaking to that first question, and probably a little to the second question, Dr. Beaudet mentioned earlier about personalized medicine and the work they're doing with Genome Canada. A great innovation is that they've started to recognize that it's not just about pr

Health committee  Yes, I'd love to speak to this as well. There's a new field within the type of work we do, and it's being referred to globally as disinvestment in health technologies. That's exactly what he was speaking to here. There are so many things we do in the health care system that were

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

Health committee  No, I don't have all of those, but I certainly could provide you with a link to the website.

Health committee  They work very closely as well with patient groups and consumer groups to ensure that the information is spread widely as well.

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  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  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  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  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  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  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  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