Tailoring access to high cost, genetically targeted drugs

Hall, Wayne D; Ward, Robyn; Liauw, Winston S; Brien, Jo-anne E; Lu, Christine Y

doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2005.tb06844.x

Topics

Assessment of real cost effectiveness, with data linked to individual health outcomes while protecting patient privacy, is an essential challenge we need to meet

Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics — the use of genetic and genomic information, respectively, to tailor drugs to the treatment of individual patients — make it possible to use information from the human genome in ways that will radically transform the prevention and treatment of human disease.1,2 Over the past several years, Australians have been given access to several drugs which can be prescribed under a taxpayer-funded scheme only if the patient has a specific molecular disease target that predicts a good treatment outcome.

1 Office of Public Policy and Ethics, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD.
2 St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, NSW.
3 University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW.
4 University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.

Correspondence:

Competing interests:

Robyn Ward is a member of the PBAC but the views in this article are not made on behalf of this committee.

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