ARTICLE | Politics, Policy & Law
Access and innovation in Japan
How Japan’s MHLW is grappling with drug pricing, access and innovation
April 28, 2017 11:55 PM UTC
Regulatory reforms have paved the way for innovative therapies to launch in Japan before anywhere else in the world. This should result in earlier access to more innovative medicines than ever before - but only if policies on drug pricing can catch up.
As the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) rushes to implement across-the-board pricing reforms by the start of FY18 next April 1, it has the opportunity to devise a value-based system for breakthrough therapies whose early but limited data make them ripe for novel pricing approaches...