Health committee  Good morning. It is quite early morning for us, and almost lunchtime for you, I guess. I've been the general manager here at Medicines New Zealand for a little over two years. Before that I worked in a variety of industries, where I was mainly involved with innovation, export d

Health committee  Thank you very much. I'll limit my discussion points to innovative or patented medicines. Obviously, as the industry association for patented medicines, we don't represent generics and over-the-counter products, so bear that in mind. For anyone, the biggest strength—and I'm sur

Health committee  Yes. We've seen, I think, over the past five years quite a bit more awareness in the public and health care professionals and in general media debates over a lack of access to medicines in New Zealand. Out of interest, an online survey completed last year showed that of the over

Health committee  I think it's a matter of hitting the right level of funding. As we've stated, Pharmac has done a good job with what the agreement is, but it's a matter of funding it at the right level. I'm not sure whether Matthew touched on this, but Pharmac received a very large increase in fu

Health committee  Although I'm quite happy to send the committee the papers, if they so I wish, there have been studies that actually quantitfy this, and these are those real-world studies that I was referring to. The Australian study I referred to talked about a range of chronic and acute condi

Health committee  It comes down to transparency, because while their PTAC had the priorities—high, medium, low, or funded but cost-neutral—we're not sure of the criteria that they've come up with for this. We assume it's what they refer to as the factors for consideration, but it's a question that

Health committee  Yes. The opposite was actually used as the reason for doing clinical trials. The idea was that because you don't get access to the innovative medicines, you should be doing clinical trials in New Zealand, because then patients could actually.... The Health Select Committee invest

Health committee  It's the same process that you go through, generic or innovative. About 78% by volume is generic. The majority of the medicines are generics. It's only some that we're aware of that have the rebate system, which I'm sure Matthew touched on. You go through the same system. Obviou

Health committee  I think about the last round of tenders—

Health committee  It was about 80% in the last round of tenders, which is what Pharmac goes out for. About 80% of the community pharmaceuticals were sole supply, and for hospital medicines it was about 78%. An interesting little fact is that we have drug shortages in New Zealand. Of the last eigh

Health committee  Roche.

Health committee  It's a publicly funded system. I think it's been mentioned before that most people would access it through going to a doctor to pick up a prescription, then going to a chemist, a local pharmacist, and picking up medicine that way. Essentially the way the system works is that as s

Health committee  Yes, it's a public administration system. It's through public health.

Health committee  New Zealand now has a system under which anyone under the age of 13 has free prescriptions at no charge. Young children aren't charged at all.

Health committee  It came in for a lot of criticism publicly from oncologists at the time it was first released. It's not based.... As I mentioned, the studies that I saw had been based on the real world, so they were looking at this vast system with their medicines in it. The Pharmac study was