Pricing of pharmaceuticals. Assessing the pricing potential by a pricing matrix model

Pricing and reimbursement of new pharmaceuticals have been based until recently on the traditional clinical trial outcomes (efficacy, safety, and quality parameters) used for registration. Now we can distinguish various additional data requirements which relate to the use of the drug in real daily practice. The most important new data requirements are effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and budgetary impact. A main question is how much the impact is of the various types of data in the pricing and reimbursement process. The objective of this contribution is to present a method for quantifying this type of uncertainty in order to develop a more solid pricing and reimbursement strategy for a new innovative drug. The concepts are illustrated for a new hypothetical antidepressant drug in The Netherlands. This method is based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) concept which measures decision makers' preferences for the critical success factors. This study shows that the AHP concept may be applied to the pricing and reimbursement environment. The method may be used to assess the pricing potential of a new drug, considering the various data requirements in the reimbursement process.