Prepared by: Dr. Yazed Alruthia, Dr. Hana Alabdulkarim, Dr. Mai Alsaqa’aby
The fourth virtual educational activity for the ISPOR chapter in Saudi Arabia, which was held in March 2023, addressed the need to align the current public pharmaceutical procurement and purchasing policy with the country’s new economic vision, which is also known as vision 2030.
This webinar included two presentations by Dr Hana Alabdulkarim, director of Pharmacoeconomics and drug policy at the Ministry of National Guard Healthcare Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Prof Yazed Alruthia, director of pharmacoeconomics research unit at King Saud University College of Pharmacy, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, followed by an open session for question and answers.
The webinar lasted approximately 3 hours and included an overview about the principles of health economics, the pillars of vision 2030, healthcare financing, and healthcare coverage in Saudi Arabia. It also discussed the current pharmaceutical procurement strategy for public healthcare institutions and the room for improvement there. Additionally, the traditional and innovative funding mechanisms of healthcare were briefly presented and compared.
The drivers of higher prescription drugs costs, such as higher volumes of prescription medications, higher prices, and shifting to more expensive therapies, were also discussed. Moreover, the fact that more than 50% of the dispensed prescription medications are brand-name prescription drugs despite the availability of generic versions of the same drugs compared to other advanced countries, such as the United States and Australia, underscores the need to reform the current procurement and purchasing policy for pharmaceuticals in the kingdom and this was discussed in the webinar.
The webinar has also discussed the new objectives of the governmental purchasing policies aimed at increasing the contributions of different stakeholders in the local pharmaceutical market, such as local and multinational pharmaceutical companies, in the local content using different strategies. These strategies, such as incentivizing the technology transfer and tying the governmental purchasing of pharmaceutical and medical devices with a scoring formula that rewards pharmaceutical manufacturers who invest in the kingdom and enrich the local content.
The webinar has also highlighted the difficulties that continue to persist and hinder the implementation of economic evaluations for different health technologies, such as the fragmented healthcare system, the poor documentation of healthcare data despite the availability of electronic medical records (EMRs) in the majority of public healthcare institutions, and the resistance of some healthcare providers in decision-making positions to utilize health economics evaluation tools to inform their decisions.
In addition, the webinar provided an overview of different managed entry agreements, both outcome-based and financial-based, and the advantages and disadvantages of each one of them. The agreements, such as conditional treatment continuation, coverage with evidence development, pattern or process of care, price volume agreement, price cap per patient, and free-drug supply after a predefined duration were reviewed. Additionally, the need to generate real-world evidence concerning the value of different health technology particularly for orphan medicinal products was also discussed. Finally, recommendations to reform the current pharmaceutical procurement and purchasing policies were discussed in the questions and answers sessions.
For more information about ISPOR Saudi Arabia Chapter activities, please visit https://ispor-saudi.com/.