Pharma Blog Watch

Regulating Comparative Effectiveness (Pharmalot)
In his blog, Ed Silverman discusses a proposed new U.S. drug regulatory body that "would be modeled after the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, which rejects drugs that are deemed ineffective …"

"The U.S. version, which is being floated about, is being called a Comparative Effectiveness Board [CEB], which would review the evidence on how well drugs work, whether they are cost-effective and, if necessary, carry out its own clinical trials," he writes. "The idea, CEB advocates say, is to break the pharmaceutical industry's stranglehold on drug prices and stop it from peddling marginally effective medicines. Not surprisingly, drugmakers are unhappy with the idea of a government body judging a drug's value for money."