Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Fewer drugs are marketed in Canada compared to the USA. Due to policy differences, Canadians may be wondering if they are missing out on important therapies. Therefore, we identified drugs that were purchased in the USA but not in Canada to determine if Canadians do not have access to important therapies. First, we identified drugs purchased in the USA between 2017-2021, and excluded drugs that had no purchases in Canada as well as natural health, homeopathic, and over-the-counter products. We also excluded drugs which have since been discontinued in the USA or marketed in Canada. The final analysis included 399 drugs. Using data from Health Canada, we placed these 399 drugs into categories. We found that 30% were "cancelled post market," 10% were "dormant, approved, or cancelled pre-market," 12% were "formulation unavailable," 33% were "existing drug class," 9% were "therapeutically similar," 1% were "pre-notice of compliance," 4% were "atypical access available," and 2% were "not available". Of the 9 drugs that were "not available" in Canada, 2 had 50% likelihood of having major therapeutic value, 3 had 18% likelihood, 3 had 9% likelihood, and 1 had 5% likelihood. Overall, Canadians have similar access to important drug therapies compared to the USA.