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Biomedical subjects

W McNee

Publications and source records attributed to W McNee.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

PHARMAC at what cost?

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Anticholesteremic Agents↗
PubMed1999

Managing pharmaceutical expenditure while increasing access. The pharmaceutical management agency (PHARMAC) experience.

The role of the Pharmaceutical Management Agency (PHARMAC) is to manage pharmaceutical subsidy expenditure in New Zealand. PHARMAC has adopted a proactive approach. It selects the drugs that are to be subsidized and declines to subsidize others. It has established reference pricing across many drug groups, has entered into a range of innovative commercial contracts with pharmaceutical companies, and has encouraged greater price competition among pharmaceutical companies in order to lower prices and control expenditure risk. These initiatives have all been part of an overarching strategy to improve the value of the government's expenditure on pharmaceuticals. PHARMAC has also developed techniques of cost-utility analysis to assess the value of expenditure. PHARMAC has slowed pharmaceutical expenditure growth, culminating in a fall in expenditure in the 1998/1999 year. At the same time, patient access has continued to expand, with more prescriptions being written and new drugs being subsidized. Therefore, PHARMAC has made dramatic strides to improve the value of the government's expenditure on pharmaceutical subsidies and its actions have meant that more funds have been available for investment in other health services, than would have occurred if previous policies had remained unchanged.

Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors↗
PubMed1998

PHARMAC and statins.

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Anticholesteremic Agents↗
PubMed1992

Relationship between the debrisoquine hydroxylase polymorphism and cancer susceptibility.

There have been a series of reports on the association of a genetic polymorphism at the cytochrome P450 CYP2D6 gene locus with cancer susceptibility. Many of these reports have remained contradictory either because of small numbers of patients studied or because of the limitations and controversy surrounding the pharmacokinetic assay used to identify affected individuals (poor metabolizers; PMs). We have recently developed a DNA-based assay that will allow the unequivocal identification of poor metabolizers and have applied this to the study of 1635 patients with different forms of cancer. Out of 361 lung cancer patients studied no statistically significant change in the proportion of PMs relative to controls was found. However, a significant increase in the proportion of poor metabolizers or heterozygotes was seen in leukaemia, bladder cancer and melanoma patients. This could be explained by a role for CYP2D6 in carcinogen detoxification or by linkage to another cancer-causing gene.

Amino Acid Sequence↗