Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Canadian Medical Association represents more than 65,000 physicians in Canada, and pharmaceutical issues play a critical part in the everyday practices of these physicians. To help Canada's doctors better serve and treat patients, the CMA is developing

Health committee  Well, in no particular order, the view of the Canadian Medical Association is that whatever drug review exists, it exists as an informative exercise based on outcomes, so it's evidence-based. The funding is a separate issue, which is a provincial-territorial responsibility, but t

Health committee  And the difficulty there is that there's a feeling amongst physicians that this is an economic rationing exercise rather than necessarily one that's focused on outcomes, because the data just don't seem to be there to support the outcome issue. But perhaps Briane has a better na

Health committee  I think the answer to that is that it depends. If you put in place an evaluation process, you will answer that question. And if CDR works, that's fine; if not, find out what's wrong with it and fix it.

Health committee  I will just speak on a very local basis, and perhaps I'll let Briane Scharfstein answer the more national question. On a local basis, our problem is on a provincial level, with trying to get what we call special authorizations in the province.

Health committee  I have no preconceived ideas. I think you would need to involve the individuals concerned and perhaps make sure that whatever.... The prime thing is that it has to be transparent. It has to be visible to all. I think these appeals have to be along the same lines as the drugs and

Health committee  I think you have to bear in mind the comments of Mr. Upshall about research and pharmaceuticals. We had some data presented to the CMA by an expert in genomics that suggested that the biological companies had three main areas of interest in their research programs that they were

Health committee  Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the Canadian Medical Association and our more than 67,000 physician members across Canada, I welcome the opportunity to participate in your committee's study on post-market surveillance of prescription drugs.

Health committee  I think Dr. Bennett's comments and her colleague's questions speak to communication. One of the difficulties we have is the number and volume of communications. I can get up to about 80 communications a month on drug- and product-related issues. They're opened, but whether they

Health committee  I think everyone's looking at me. I think there are a couple of very important points here. One is medication error. Medication issues have been highlighted in other jurisdictions, and in the Baker and Norton report, as a major issue. I think I will just put that point to the

Health committee  You're right, there is a huge knowledge gap. The bulk of the information about pharmaceutical agents that the average practitioner receives comes from the pharmaceutical industry directly just because of ease and convenience. That's what the drug companies do. That's how they ope

Health committee  No. We as an association think that is a nice outline of the system. We see the post-marketing surveillance very much as part of a process that begins with initial clinical trials and evaluation and the licensing of drugs, and then moves through the product cycle to keep an eye o

Health committee  The answer is that at the moment, the data doesn't exist in any usable way for this country. One of the things our proposal might do is to address that in terms of getting proper prevalence data. We would see the post-market surveillance system with reporting from physicians as

Health committee  Yes, essentially.

Health committee  The issue of reporting an adverse event has been very cumbersome until lately. It has improved with Health Canada's MedEffect. Having said that, I would suggest that probably 60% of my colleagues aren't actually aware of its existence, even though it's been up and running for a w