Thailand has successfully implemented economic evaluation to inform the inclusion of new, branded medicines within its National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM). This method can be used to assess the health value that new medicines will generate for patients after accounting for the health los

The Cancer Drug Fund (CDF) is a dedicated source of funding in England for increasing patient access to high-cost cancer drugs, with a fixed budget of £340 million per year, operating since 2016. The CDF follows the appraisal by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) whic

This policy brief provides a summary of a recent review of the definition of rare diseases, high cost and how HTA has been used in the case of rare diseases in seven countries. The countries were purposively selected based on them having established HTA policies and availability of resources in the

Because of their rarity, rare diseases are often treated with what the industry refers to as ‘orphan drugs’. These group of drugs are quite expensive because of the fewer number of people suffering from such sickness and usually provide low profit to manufacturer compared to other common drug for n

Ministry of Public Health, the Royal Thai Government, has been entrusted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to co-host the First Global Forum on Medical Devices, scheduled to take place September 9th-11th, 2010, at the Hotel Plaza Athenee, Bangkok. The event attracted over 300 stakeholders, such as policy makers, scholars and health professiona

The Union of Myanmar is the largest country in mainland South-East Asia with a population of 57.5 million. It has a pluralistic mix of public and private healthcare systems. Although the Ministry of Health (MoH) is the main organisation responsible for healthcare provision, 70-80% of health service expenditure is now absorbed by the households. Thi

Spouses of heart attack victims have an increased risk of depression and anxiety, even if their partner survives, Danish research suggests.The study found that in the year after losing a spouse to a heart attack, partners were three times more likely to start taking anti-depressants.Even if their pa

The drug, linaclotide, will be sold under the brand name Linzess and carry a boxed warning that it should not be used in patients 16 or younger, the agency said.An estimated 63 million people suffer from chronic constipation, according to the National Institutes of Health. Additionally, an estimated

(Reuters) – Victims of thalidomide said on Saturday an apology from the German inventor of the drug that caused birth defects in thousands of babies around the world was too little too late.Thalidomide, developed by the German firm Gruenenthal, was marketed internationally to pregnant women in the l

Copies of the divisive 2010 Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s health care overhaul, in the office of Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, and at the headquarters of Families USA, an advocacy group that supported it. A provision allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ policies