Nearly One-Third Of New Drugs Are No Better Than Older Drugs, And Some Are Worse

A Focus On Expediting Drug Development Congress has instructed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expedite the development and review of promising new drugs through the creation of four programs: accelerated approval, fast-track, breakthrough, and priority review. In a recent Health Affairs article, James D. Chambers and colleagues reported that drugs approved under one or more expedited programs were, on average, associated with larger health gains than those approved under conventional development and review programs. They concluded that the FDA has prioritized the review of drugs that offer the largest clinical advancements. Chambers and his colleagues should be applauded for using as their metric net health benefit, which is the raison d’être of any pharmaceutical intervention. Although they focused on the FDA’s expedited programs, their research also revealed important information about the benefits of new drugs that is highly patient-relevant, namely, that 20 percent of expedited drugs and 41 percent of non-expedited drugs offered zero or negative incremental health gains over older comparators. Expedited Programs Benefit Higher-Value Drugs Examining drugs approved between 1999 and 2012, the researchers found that drug-indication pairs (some drugs are approved for multiple indications, and each drug-indication pair may separately benefit from expedited development or review) in one expedited program averaged a benefit of 0.22 quality-adjusted life years (QAL...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Drugs and Medical Innovation expediting drug development Food and Drug Administration Prescription Drugs QALY quality-adjusted life years Source Type: blogs