PMPRB 2006 Annual Report Published

The 2006 PMPRB Annual Report was published on the Board's website today. Some highlights from the report include the following:

Compliance and Review

• 99 DINs are "new" in 2006.....As of Mar/07, 79 had been reviewed. Of those, 68 were within the Guidelines, while 11 are subject to investigations
• A total of 1181 patented drug products for human use were under the PMPRB’s jurisdiction in 2006 (76 were "Under Investigation", as of Mar/07)
• In 2006, Board approved 3 Voluntary Compliance Undertakings and issued 6 Notices of Hearing [There are currently 7 hearings at various stages of completion plus Nicoderm which is reported as "pending - final resolution", although this hearing was never held. There have been 2 VCU's in 2007]

• Sales of patented drugs in Canada increased by 3.7% to $12 billion in 2006 compared to 27% in 1999
• Share of total sales accounted for by patented drugs declined to 68.1% in 2006 from 71.4% in 2005
• Antineoplastics and immunomodulating agents remain the leading contributing drug class to sales growth
• Manufacturers’ prices of patented drugs as measured by the Patented Medicine Price Index (PMPI) decreased on average by 0.2% in 2006
• 5 of the 7 countries registered overall price declines in 2006 while US prices rose by more than 7% on average. Canada decreased by 0.2%
• Ratio of Canadian prices to the international median for comparator countries was slightly below parity

• R&D to Sales ratio for all reporting patentees dropped down to 8.1% from 8.7% in 2005
• R&D to Sales ratio for Rx&D member companies was down to 8.5% compared to 8.8% in 2005
• Total R&D expenditures for all reporting patentees was $1.2 billion in 2006, a slight decrease of 1.9% over the previous year
• R&D expenditures for Rx&D members was $949 million in 2006 compared to $1.0 billion in 2005

• The review of the Excessive Price Guidelines is ongoing with the upcoming creation of working groups and bilateral meetings in the fall
• Board has noted that the current Guidelines do not address the Patent Act factor dealing with the price of other medicines in the therapeutic class in other countries