OHE is delighted to welcome Dr Aslam Anis as a visiting researcher at OHE for the month of February 2015.

 

Dr. Anis is a respected health economist and the Director of the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcomes Sciences (CHEOS), one of the largest and most productive multidisciplinary health outcomes research groups in Canada. Dr. Anis is also a Professor in the School of Population and Public Health (SPPH) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the National Director of the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network (CTN). His primary areas of expertise include Canadian competition policy in the pharmaceutical industry and the cost-effectiveness of treatments for HIV/AIDS and rheumatoid arthritis. 

 

Dr. Anis’s research activities have been extensive. His earliest studies pertaining to the pharmaceutical industry showed that pricing regulations as they were being implemented by provincial drug plans were responsible for higher generic drug prices in Canada. 

 

His related research has since focused on the influence of federal pricing policies on the price of brand-name pharmaceuticals, as well as the impact of government regulations, insurance deductibles and co-payments on drug use. 

 

In 1995, as the founding director of the Pharmacoeconomic Initiative of BC, Dr. Anis developed a framework under which pharmaceutical firms seeking to list drugs on the provincial formulary were required to submit cost-effectiveness data to inform the government’s decision. While such decision making is now under the remit of a Canadian federal initiative, methodological issues related to such decision making particularly the appropriate measurement of indirect costs and how they can be incorporated into reimbursement decision making is still of great interest to Dr. Anis.

 

While visiting the OHE, Dr. Anis will be working with OHE’s Director, Adrian Towse, and other OHE team members.  He welcomes the opportunity to learn more about current developments in health policy in the UK and is pleased to present his ongoing research at the upcoming OHE seminar. 

 

The title of the upcoming seminar is: The impact of price-cap regulations on entry and exit by generic pharmaceutical firms in Canada. Further information can be found here.