Shortages of Medicines to Treat COVID-19 Symptoms during the First Wave and Fourth Wave: Analysis of Notifications Reported to Registers in Austria, Italy, and Spain

The study aimed to investigate medicine shortages of critical relevance in the pandemic. A total of 487 active substances for the treatment of COVID-19-related symptoms and therapeutically similar medicines were reviewed as to whether or not a shortage had been notified in Austria, Italy, and Spain for February 2020, March 2020, April 2020 (first wave of the pandemic), and, in comparison, in November 2021 (fourth wave). Publicly accessible shortage registers managed by the national regulatory authorities were consulted. For 48 active substances, a shortage was notified for at least one of the study months, mostly March and April 2020. Out of these 48 active substances, 30 had been explicitly recommended as COVID-19 therapy options. A total of 71% of the active substances with notified shortage concerned medicines labeled as essential by the World Health Organization. During the first wave, Spain and Italy had higher numbers of shortage notifications for the product sample, in terms of active substances as well as medicine presentations, than Austria. In November 2021, the number of shortage notifications for the studied substances reached lower levels in Austria and Spain. The study showed an increase in shortage notifications for COVID-19-relevant medicines in the first months of the pandemic.

Unmet Medical Needs in Chronic, Non-communicable Inflammatory Skin Diseases

An estimated 20-25% of the population is affected by chronic, non-communicable inflammatory skin diseases. Chronic skin inflammation has many causes. Among the most frequent chronic inflammatory skin diseases are atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, urticaria, lichen planus, and hidradenitis suppurativa, driven by a complex interplay of genetics and environmental factors. Autoimmunity is another important cause of chronic skin inflammation. The autoimmune response may be mainly T cell driven, such as in alopecia areata or vitiligo, or B cell driven in chronic spontaneous urticaria, pemphigus and pemphigoid diseases. Rare causes of chronic skin inflammation are autoinflammatory diseases, or rheumatic diseases, such as cutaneous lupus erythematosus or dermatomyositis. Whilst we have seen a significant improvement in diagnosis and treatment, several challenges remain. Especially for rarer causes of chronic skin inflammation, early diagnosis is often missed because of low awareness and lack of diagnostics. Systemic immunosuppression is the treatment of choice for almost all of these diseases. Adverse events due to immunosuppression, insufficient therapeutic responses and relapses remain a challenge. For atopic dermatitis and psoriasis, a broad spectrum of innovative treatments has been developed. However, treatment responses cannot be predicted so far. Hence, development of (bio)markers allowing selection of specific medications for individual patients is needed. Given the encouraging developments during the past years, we envision that many of these challenges in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic inflammatory skin diseases will be thoroughly addressed in the future.

Estimation of the medical need for carbon-ion radiotherapy in Korea

The Korea Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator project focuses on the development of medical accelerator facilities for delivering carbon-ion beams to cancer patients. The purpose of the present study was to estimate the clinical need for carbon-ion therapy in Korea. Seven tumor sites, namely head and neck, liver, lung, colon and rectum, prostate, bone and soft tissue, and pancreas were selected as eligible sites for receiving carbon-ion radiotherapy (RT) by radiation oncologists of the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences. Cancer incidence data for the selected tumor sites were obtained from the Korea National Cancer Incidence Database in order to estimate the potential medical need for carbon-ion RT. The carbon-ion RT adaption rate was assessed based on the clinical experience of other carbon-ion therapy facilities. An estimation model was constructed for estimating the medical need for carbon-ion RT, and from this, 25 606 patients were deemed to be potential candidates for carbon-ion RT. This estimated potential need corresponded to 10% of newly diagnosed cancer patients in Korea. The realistic estimation was calculated as ranging between 4000 and 6300 patients, depending on the carbon-ion RT adaptation rate. This estimated medical need corresponded to 2-3% of newly diagnosed cancer patients in Korea. Taken together, our findings suggest that there is a clear medical need for carbon-ion RT in Korea, with at least 4000 potential patients per year.

Regional Disparity and Factors Influencing Unmet Medical Needs: A Study Based on the Sixth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2015)

Objectives

This study aimed to determine regional differences and the factors that affect unmet medical needs.

Methods

Data from the 6th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2015) were used, and 4,946 health survey participants who provided responses on medical utilization and health behavior were included in the study.

Results

A statistically significant difference was observed in the incidence rate of unmet medical needs in terms of region. The independent variables that affected unmet medical needs were sex, age, education, region, household income, insurance type, smoking status, self-reported health status, and stress awareness. Gender (female), lower education level, rural residents, lowest household income, poor self-reported health status, and stress awareness increased the probability of unmet medical needs.

Conclusion

Our findings suggested that different policies and approaches should be considered for each population that is at risk to address the primary cause of the unmet medical needs. Further studies that include medical expenses and the relevant variables of an area should be conducted in the future.

Medical Need, Equality, and Uncertainty

Many hold that distributing healthcare according to medical need is a requirement of equality. Most egalitarians believe, however, that people ought to be equal on the whole, by some overall measure of well-being or life-prospects; it would be a massive coincidence if distributing healthcare according to medical need turned out to be an effective way of promoting equality overall. I argue that distributing healthcare according to medical need is important for reducing individuals' uncertainty surrounding their future medical needs. In other words, distributing healthcare according to medical need is a natural feature of healthcare insurance; it is about indemnity, not equality.

Incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year gained? The need for alternative methods to evaluate medical interventions for ultra-rare disorders

Drugs for ultra-rare disorders (URDs) rank prominently among the most expensive medicines on a cost-per-patient basis. Many of them do not meet conventional standards for cost-effectiveness. In light of the high fixed cost of R&D, this challenge is inversely related to the prevalence of URDs. The present paper sets out to explain the rationale underlying a recent expert consensus on these issues, recommending a more rigorous assessment of the clinical effectiveness of URDs, applying established standards of evidence-based medicine. This may include conditional approval and reimbursement policies, which should be combined with a firm expectation of proof of a minimum significant clinical benefit within a reasonable time. In contrast, current health economic evaluation paradigms fail to adequately reflect normative and empirical concerns (i.e., morally defensible 'social preferences') regarding healthcare resource allocation. Hence there is a strong need for alternative economic evaluation models for URDs.

Key performance indicators for the assessment of pediatric pharmacotherapeutic guidance

Given the paucity of actual guidance provided for managing pediatric drug therapy, prescribing caregivers must be able to draw on the limited published information in pediatrics and/or guidance provided in adults with some account for expected pediatric response. Guidance for managing drug therapy in children is clearly desirable. Our objectives were to construct key performance indicators (KPIs) for pediatric pharmacotherapy guidance to identify drugs where pharmacotherapy guidance would be most beneficial. A pilot survey to assess variation in caregiver appreciation for pediatric dosing guidance has also been constructed to provide a complementary subjective assessment. Three KPI categories, drug utilization (based on hospital admission and billing data collected from 2001 through 2006), medical need, and guidance outcome value along with a KPI composite score have been proposed. Low scores are favored with respect to prioritization for pharmacotherapy guidance. The pilot survey consisted of 15 questions to assess 1) physician knowledge regarding dosing guidance, 2) attitudes toward dose modification and patient individualization, 3) the accessibility, ease of use and appropriateness of existing data stores, and 4) frequency of dosing modification, consultation of dosing compendiums and estimate of success rate in dosing guidance. Pilot results suggest that dosing guidance is generally viewed as important and that the existing resources are insufficient to guide recommendations for all drugs. While the majority of respondents check more than one resource less than 25% of the time, at least 25% of the respondents check more than one resource 25-50% of the time. The majority viewed the relevance of dosing guidance very important to the management of drug therapy. The questionnaire is being extended to the primary care centers, the Kids First Network and specialty care centers. Results will guide the development of decision support systems (DSS) that provide patient-specific pharmacotherapy guidance as part of our pediatric knowledgebase initiative. For the top 25 most utilized agents at our institution over the last 6 years, KPI score ranged from 35 (dexamethasone) to 77 (cefazolin and ampicillin) with an average score of 55. Prototype DSS for tacrolimus and methotrexate are strongly supported by the KPI scoring which ranks their selection in the top 5% of drugs on formulary. KPI metrics provide an objective means of ranking agents for which pediatric pharmacotherapeutic guidance is clearly needed.

Valorising and creating access to innovative medicines in the European union

This Perspective describes (a) the current situation, (b) challenges and initiatives, (c) and formulates recommendations to valorize and create access to innovative medicines in the EU. We are currently still far away from optimal assessment of value for money in the EU. On the one hand, valorizing innovative medicines involves a local appraisal by health technology assessment (HTA) bodies and competent authorities about the value for money, the budget impact, and the local medical need that can be filled with new medicines. Therefore, local priorities and national health care policy environments should be reflected in the processes and criteria used for assessing value for money and ultimately for reimbursement decisions. On the other hand, a pan-European assessment of both relative effectiveness and medical need (including general ethical and social considerations) should be envisaged in order to feed part of the data needed for the local decisions in an efficient way. This could be the task of the European Medicines Agency, HTA bodies, and competent authorities together.