Disparities in access to precision oncology drugs across Canada

Accelerating access to precision oncology drugs

How long does it take for new precision cancer drugs to reach patients in Canada? With $180,000 in funding from MOHCCN’s Patient Voices in Research Initiative, a team of researchers from Kingston, Calgary and Halifax is working to find out.

Led by Dr. Bishal Gyawali (Queen’s University), the project will examine the approval and reimbursement process, comparing timelines within Canada and against other high-income countries. In doing so, the team aims to identify barriers preventing timely access to life-saving treatments.

Read our Q&A with the research team to learn more about the project. 

How would you describe your project to a lay audience?

We aim to study new precision oncology cancer drug approval and reimbursement process in Canada, including Health Canada approval, Canada’s Drug Agency’s recommendation and ultimately provincial adoption of drugs, and study the time taken at these various stages before the drug reaches patients. We then want to compare whether these timelines are comparable to other high-income countries, or comparable across different provinces in Canada. If there are delays, we aim to study different factors that may be associated with these delays.

What do you hope to achieve by the end of the project? 

By the end of the project, we aim to have a clear understanding of the following-

1. Do Canadians have delayed/limited access to precision oncology drugs compared to other high-income countries?
2. Do certain provinces in Canada have delayed/limited access to precision oncology drugs compared to other provinces?
3. If the answer to questions in a and b is yes, what are the reasons and can we identify areas of intervention? For example, are the reasons legitimate (because the drug had marginal benefit, high toxicity, etc) or are the reasons related to administrative and socio-economic factors?
   

Why is this project important? How does it advance precision medicine for cancer? What potential impact could it have on patients?

Having a clearer understanding of the above questions will help us identify first, whether Canada is on par with other high income nations and whether, patients in certain provinces even within Canada are systematically disadvantaged by having limited/delayed access to precision cancer drugs. Further, we will understand what factors are associated with these. This will help decision makers identify areas to intervene to ensure meaningful cancer drugs reach patients without delay, while simultaneously ensuring that marginal and toxic cancer drugs are filtered out by the system as it is supposed to. Thus, this project will have direct impact on patients access to precision cancer drugs.

This funding opportunity was designed and adjudicated by members of the Network’s Patient Working Group, who are all cancer patients and survivors or caregivers and family members. Why do you think it’s important for the Network to fund this type of patient-centric research? Have you ever encountered a funding opportunity like this before? 

This was a fantastic funding opportunity designed and adjudicated by the patient working group. At the end, cancer research’s primary goal is to improve patient outcomes. Improving patient outcomes in any way (survival, quality of life, experiences, satisfaction, etc.) is the ultimate endpoint of all cancer research. So, the best judge of patient-centric research should be patients, survivors, and caregivers. In addition, several research projects-like ours- that are not basic science research or clinical trials, do not have many other funding opportunities. Thus, I strongly believe that it is important for the Network to fund such patient-centric research. I have not encountered such funding opportunities before. So, thank you for creating this opportunity!