Drug pricing and reimbursement information management: processes and decision making in the global economy

Background: Cost-containment initiatives are re-shaping the pharmaceutical business environment and affecting market access as well as pricing and reimbursement decisions. Effective price management procedures are too complex to accomplish manually. Prior to February 2013, price management within Astellas Pharma Europe Ltd was done manually using an Excel database. The system was labour intensive, slow to update, and prone to error. An innovative web-based pricing information management system was developed to address the shortcomings of the previous system. Development: A secure web-based system for submitting, reviewing and approving pricing requests was designed to: track all pricing applications and approval status; update approved pricing information automatically; provide fixed and customizable reports of pricing information; collect pricing and reimbursement rules from each country; validate pricing and reimbursement rules monthly. Several sequential phases of development emphasized planning, time schedules, target dates, budgets and implementation of the entire system. A test system was used to pilot the electronic (e)-pricing system with three affiliates (four users) in February 2013. Outcomes: The web-based system was introduced in March 2013, currently has about 227 active users globally and comprises more than 1000 presentations of 150 products. The overall benefits of switching from a manual to an e-pricing system were immediate and highly visible in terms of efficiency, transparency, reliability and compliance. Conclusions: The e-pricing system has improved the efficiency, reliability, compliance, transparency and ease of access to multinational drug pricing and approval information.