CHSPR Seminar | From High Cost to High Value: 25 Years of Pharmaceutical Policy Lessons for Inflammatory Diseases

Speaker: Nick Bansback, UBC School of Population and Public Health

Since the introduction of biologics in the early 2000s, the management of inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis has undergone an enormous shift, impacting both patient outcomes and pharmaceutical budgets. This presentation will describe the 25-year evolution of the market, identifying the policy decisions and missed opportunities that shaped—and sometimes challenged—health system value. With the benefit of hindsight, the session will end with some proposals for more sustainable, value-driven policy-making in inflammatory disease and other high-cost therapeutic areas.

Nick Bansback is a professor at the UBC School of Population and Public Health, where he directs the Master of Health Administration program. He also holds scientist roles at the Centre for Advancing Health Research and Arthritis Research Canada. His research focuses on maximizing the value we obtain from health care – not only the value that patients derive from their own care and treatment options, but the value the whole population derives from the public investment in healthcare. He studies and applies the field of decision science. Where most fields of health research focus on producing new knowledge – through better evidence and new treatments and technologies – decision science studies how people (patients, clinicians, policy makers…) make choices and how they can make better choices with current knowledge, recognizing the presence of uncertainty, complexity, cognitive biases and competing values.