The Price of Global Health


Book Description

Public debate on the rising cost of new biotechnology drug treatments has intensified over the last few years as healthcare budget pressures have mounted under a strained economy. Meanwhile, the demand for new, effective medical and drug treatments continues to rise as unhealthy lifestyles cause further increases in diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Global drug pricing is one of the most hotly debated yet least understood aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. How should drug prices be set and what does it mean for patients? Why do governments increasingly get involved, and what is its impact on the global competitive environment? How can a life-saving industry have a poorer image than gun and tobacco industries, whose products are associated with death? Ed Schoonveld explains how pharmaceutical prices are determined in a complex global payer environment and what factors influence the process. His insights will help a wide range of audiences, from healthcare industry professionals to policy makers and the broader public, to gain a better understanding of this highly complex and emotionally charged field. The Price of Global Health is recognized as a valued and unique reference book that covers a complete array of topics related to global pharmaceutical pricing. It contains an in-depth but straightforward exploration of the pharmaceutical pricing strategy process, its underlying market access, general business and ethical considerations, and its implications for payers, physicians and patients. It is a much-needed and invaluable resource for anybody interested or involved in, or affected by, the development, funding and use of prescription drugs. In particular, it is of critical importance to pharmaceutical company executives and other leaders and professionals in commercialization and drug development, including marketing, business development, market access and pricing, clinical development, drug discovery, regulatory affairs, health outcomes, market research and public affairs. The second edition includes new chapters on payer value story development, oncology, orphan drugs and payer negotiations. Furthermore, many country chapters have been substantially updated to reflect changes in the healthcare systems, including the Affordable Care Act in the US, AMNOG in Germany, medico-economic requirements in France and many other country-specific changes. Lastly, almost every chapter has been updated with new examples and illustrations.




Global Health and Pharmacology


Book Description




The Price of Global Health


Book Description

The Price of Global Health is a unique book that describes the pharmaceutical pricing process and its business, economic and social challenges. Global drug pricing is one of the most hotly debated yet least understood aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. How should drug prices be set and what does it mean for patients? Why do governments increasingly get involved, and what is its impact on the global competitive environment? How can a life-saving industry have a poorer image than gun and tobacco industries, whose products are associated with death? The pharmaceutical industry is under unprecedented pressure due to a combination of declining R&D productivity, payer/provider demands for better value and public pressures to show pricing restraint. Rapidly increasing cost of healthcare, shifts from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursement, public pressure on drug pricing and an increasingly vocal medical community have empowered public and private payers worldwide to be more demanding on evidence of value for the prescription drugs that are brought to market. Pharmaceutical companies have often failed to deliver evidence of patient value, as development decision-making is overly focused on speed to FDA approval rather than speed to commercial success by effectively addressing the many “Access Journey” obstacles that typify today’s much changed pharmaceutical environment. This 3rd edition is significantly expanded with ten new chapters and revised and updated throughout to reflect today’s environment. The contents are reorganized to directly address critical pricing and patient access issues. Ed Schoonveld explains how pharmaceutical prices are determined in a complex global payer environment and what factors influence the process. His insights will help a wide range of audiences from healthcare industry professionals to policy makers, consumers, pharmaceutical company leaders and access and pricing professionals to gain a better understanding of this highly complex and emotionally charged field.




Global Health Impact


Book Description

"Every year 9 million people are diagnosed with tuberculosis, every day more than 13,400 people are infected with AIDs, every 30 seconds malaria kills a child. Many people suffer and die young because they cannot access essential medicines. This book argues that people have a right to access these medicines and proposes some new Global Health Impact labelling, investment, and licensing strategies that encourage pharmaceutical companies to improve global health (global-health-impact.org/new). The idea is to rate these companies based on their medicines' impacts. Highly rated companies will get a Global Health Impact label to use on their products. Socially responsible investment companies and universities might also take the ratings into account in making investment or licensing decisions. After arguing that people do have a right to access essential medicines, this book explores this proposal, its philosophical justification, and its prospects for success"--




Global Health Impact


Book Description

Every year nine million people are diagnosed with tuberculosis, every day over 13,400 people are infected with AIDs, and every thirty seconds malaria kills a child. For most of the world, critical medications that treat these deadly diseases are scarce, costly, and growing obsolete, as access to first-line drugs remains out of reach and resistance rates rise. Rather than focusing research and development on creating affordable medicines for these deadly global diseases, pharmaceutical companies instead invest in commercially lucrative products for more affluent customers. Nicole Hassoun argues that everyone has a human right to health and to access to essential medicines, and she proposes the Global Health Impact (global-health-impact.org/new) system as a means to guarantee those rights. Her proposal directly addresses the pharmaceutical industry's role: it rates pharmaceutical companies based on their medicines' impact on improving global health, rewarding highly-rated medicines with a Global Health Impact label. Global Health Impact has three parts. The first makes the case for a human right to health and specifically access to essential medicines. Hassoun defends the argument against recent criticism of these proposed rights. The second section develops the Global Health Impact proposal in detail. The final section explores the proposal's potential applications and effects, considering the empirical evidence that supports it and comparing it to similar ethical labels. Through a thoughtful and interdisciplinary approach to creating new labeling, investment, and licensing strategies, Global Health Impact demands an unwavering commitment to global justice and corporate responsibility.




Field Guide to Global Health & Disaster Medicine


Book Description

While serving as a physician overseas in resource-poor countries, Dr. James Chambers recognized the need for a practical, portable reference for non-specialist healthcare providers to orient them to common issues when serving in new situations, whether due to geography, austere environments, or complex humanitarian disasters. Field Guide to Global Health and Disaster Medicine draws on the experience, training, and perspectives of committed healthcare providers from diverse nations and backgrounds to provide the most essential information for maximum utility in the field—whether in a refugee camp, operating room, disaster response scene, or other demanding environment. Helps providers prepare for service overseas, organize data to develop differential diagnoses, assimilate information on infectious and environmental diseases, and effectively serve the patients they will encounter. Provides concise, easy-to-read coverage of how to approach a differential diagnosis for infectious diseases overseas; nutritional, sexual, and environmental conditions; surgical and anesthesia care; long-term and short-term systems-based challenges, and more. Covers key topics such as Approach to Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, Medical Response to Disasters, Mental Health in War and Crisis Regions, and Considerations for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Acknowledges the wide variance of different cultures, motives, resources, and limitations in the global health arena, and helps readers understand the factors which impact the efficacy and sustainability of care strategies.




Compound Solutions


Book Description

Claiming 1.5 million lives in 2015, tuberculosis is the world's most deadly infectious disease. Because of the population it overwhelmingly affects, however, pharmaceutical companies are uninterested in developing better drugs for the disease. Compound Solutions examines Product Development Partnerships (PDPs), which arose early in the twenty-first century to develop new drugs and vaccines for infectious diseases in low-income countries. Here, for the first time, is a sustained examination of PDPs: the work they do, the partnerships they form, their mission, and their underlying philosophy of addressing global health needs--with implications that extend well beyond tuberculosis. Focusing on two PDPs for tuberculosis--the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) and Aeras (a nonprofit focused on vaccine development)--Susan Craddock argues that PDPs do much more than product development. As innovative sites of humanitarian pharmaceutical production, they are contravening mainstream pharmaceutical production by tying drug and vaccine research to global health needs rather than shareholder demand. In largely untethering the profit incentive from pharmaceutical production, Craddock shows, PDPs exhibit more creative and efficient scientific practices, reshaping regulatory norms and implementing more ethical forms of clinical trials that enhance community engagement and capacity building. An unparalleled, interdisciplinary analysis of PDPs as politically, socially, scientifically, and economically innovative sites of pharmaceutical production, Compound Solutions is a must for readers in the fields of public health, science and technology studies, and medical social science.




Pharmacy on a Bicycle


Book Description

Every four minutes, over 50 children under the age of five die. In the same four minutes, 2 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Every year, malaria kills nearly 1.2 million people, despite the fact that it can be prevented with a mosquito net and treated for less than $1.50. Sadly, this list goes on and on. Millions are dying from diseases that we can easily and inexpensively prevent, diagnose, and treat. Why? Because even though we know exactly what people need, we just can’t get it to them. They are dying not because we can’t solve a medical problem but because we can’t solve a logistics problem. In this profoundly important book, Eric G. Bing and Marc J. Epstein lay out a solution: a new kind of bottom-up health care that is delivered at the source. We need microclinics, micropharmacies, and microentrepreneurs located in the remote, hard-to-reach communities they serve. By building a new model that “scales down” to train and incentivize all kinds of health-care providers in their own villages and towns, we can create an army of on-site professionals who can prevent tragedy at a fraction of the cost of top-down bureaucratic programs. Bing and Epstein have seen the model work, and they provide example after example of the extraordinary results it has achieved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is a book about taking health care the last mile—sometimes literally—to prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering. Pharmacy on a Bicycle shows how the same forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that work in first-world business cultures can be unleashed to save the lives of millions.




Global Health Partnerships


Book Description

An exploration into the current status and future growth of the global pharmaceutical industry and the changing needs of global health. It provides comprehensive coverage of the role of the global pharmaceutical industry in general, and the participation of BRICAs in specific, to address global health needs.




Pandemics, Pills, and Politics


Book Description

Encapsulating security : pharmaceutical defenses against biological danger -- Discovering a virus's achilles heel : flu fighting at molecular scale -- The pill always wins: Gilead Sciences, Roche and the birth of Tamiflu -- What a difference a day makes : the margin call for regulatory agencies -- Virtual blockbuster : bird flu and the pandemic of preparedness planning -- In the eye of the storm : global access, generics and intellectual property -- 'Ode to Tamiflu' : side effects, teenage 'suicides' and corporate liabilities -- Data backlash : Roche and Cochrane square up over clinical trial data -- 'To boldly go ... ' : pharmaceutical enterprises and global health security -- Epilogue : pharmaceuticals, security and molecular life