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 Consequently, new data-driven flexible pricing schemes the Swiss
drugmaker and others in the industry are pushing to replace today's
"pay-per-pill" approach are well advanced in cancer treatment but
will take longer for conditions like multiple sclerosis (MS),
Grueger said.
Such schemes foresee drug pricing based on measurable benefits for a
patient or health care systems, an approach seen as becoming more
important as aging populations and chronic disease put the squeeze
on health care systems.
Roche has introduced flexible pricing for cancer drugs in about a
dozen European countries, including Italy, Belgium, Hungary,
Switzerland and Austria. For instance, it already prices drugs like
Avastin differently in some markets depending on the cancer being
targeted.
On the flipside, if Roche's investigational MS drug Ocrevus wins
U.S. regulators' approval -- possibly as early as next month --
pricing it flexibly for patients with different forms of the highly
variable neurological disease is not in the cards.
"At this point in time, we don't see a way that it would practically
work," Grueger said in an interview. "The data are not available,
but it would be very much in line with our pricing philosophy."
Novartis Chief Executive Joe Jimenez has struck value-based pricing
deals with insurers on its heart failure drug Entresto.
But Jimenez has also called out inadequate data collection as a
barrier to new pricing models.
"Building the framework needed to support value-based pricing, and
the infrastructure of data and systems required to achieve them, is
a priority for us," said Jimenez, whose company is also working on a
new drug for MS.
MS researchers have raised the issue of improved data too.
"To truly personalize treatment of MS, major breakthroughs in the
areas of bioinformatics and biological computation systems will be
required to make sense of this large and complex mix of information
types," researchers from the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus
in Dresden wrote earlier this year.
DRUG PRICE DEBATE
Amid escalating concern over drug prices, Roche and Novartis have
invested millions to collect and analyze patient data, to help make
the case their new medicines should still command a premium.
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Roche this year led a $175 million investment into U.S. cancer data
company Flatiron Health, while Novartis has expanded post-approval
research into its $4,500-per-year heart failure medicine Entresto,
to convince doctors and insurers of its merits versus older, cheaper
medicines.
Experts say insurers and governments will intensify demands that
pharmaceuticals makers justify their asking price for drugs by
demonstrating they can generate savings for health care systems
while improving patients' quality of life.
"The industry will need to capture this data to prove their
medicines work in the real world," said Hilary Thomas, chief medical
adviser at KPMG.
Drug costs have been the center of heated political debate, too,
with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton promising to
halt big price hikes if elected, and the U.S. state of California
weighing in on a price-limits measure the industry is fighting tooth
and nail.
Against this backdrop, drugmakers say arming themselves with more
data about their medicines will help them support prices.
"If you cannot demonstrate an additional benefit for patients, you
should not charge a premium," Grueger said. "The bar that has been
set for demonstrating this evidence has been rising."
He expects Flatiron's algorithms to buttress Roche's arguments
during talks with payers as new combinations of expensive,
often-personalized therapies hit the market.
"It gives us better insights into the potential for our products,"
Grueger said. "But it also creates flexibility in how we can create
value contracts in the future."
(Editing by Anna Willard)
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