(Caitlin Cherry) Kia Ora I'm Caitlin Cherry and I'm here with Michael Johnson, who's here to tell us about Pharmac's strategy and future direction. First, can you remind us of your job title?
(Michael Johnson) Kia ora Caitlin, I'm Pharmac's Director of Strategy Policy and Performance.
(CC) Excellent, so 30th anniversary, 30th birthday. In a nutshell, what would you say Pharmac has achieved?
(MJ) In that time, I think that Pharmac's achieved a lot over its last 30 years but, for me, I think the key thing is that we've made more medicines available for more New Zealanders.
(CC) So how's Pharmac's role changed over the years?
(MJ) So when Pharmac was first established, the focus was very much on just community medicines. But over the last, um, number of years there's been an expansion into hospital medicines, cancer medicines, taking on responsibility for vaccines, blood products and, more recently, our work in hospital medical devices.
(MJ) Our focus initially has been on national contracting for devices. But with the health reforms and the establishment of Te Whatu Ora, we're working and collaborating with them on looking at putting in place more of a coordinated national system for hospital medical devices. Bit of work to do in that space, but we're really looking forward and making some great progress.
(CC) And what are some of the standouts for you and your time at Pharmac?
(MJ) I think it's some of the medicines we've funded in over the last few years. I think about Maviret for hepatitis C that cures the disease for 95% of people, funding for breast cancer medicines, lung cancer medicines, the medicines that were funded for diabetes with a particular focus on Māori and Pacific people accessing those medicines.
(MJ) More recently, Trikafta for cystic fibrosis and I also think through just some of the rare disorder medicines, for SMA, Spinraza. It's just fantastic to see those being funded for those particular population groups.
(CC) There was of course a review done of Pharmac last year. It wasn't entirely positive, so what is Pharmac doing to address some of the concerns raised in that?
(MJ) Yes, I think the Pharmac review and government response last year. You know, Pharmac welcomed that. It signaled areas of improvement, which we've been making some progress on but there's more to do.
(MJ) Certainly one of those areas is our process for assessing and funding medicines and other products. We've been looking at that probably since 2018 to try and, I guess, speed up our processes whilst at the same time making sure that we continue to make high-quality, evidence-based decisions.
(MJ) We've got more work to do. We've been making some progress over the last 12 to 24 months. But we've certainly got it as a focus for the next few years, in terms, trying to make the whole process more efficient and more effective.
(CC) So like all Crown entities, Pharmac has to come up with a Statement of Intent, or SOI, so what is this year's SOI?
(MJ) Yes, we've recently published our Statement of Intent in July which sets out our vision, strategic priorities, and focus for the next three years. There's areas that we need to improve on and focus on and expectations of us from the health reforms.
(MJ) In particular thinking about how we enhance and speed up our assessment decision making processes, looking at how we embed Te Tiriti across all of our work, looking at how we can improve health equity for population groups, in particular, focusing on Māori and Pacific people. But also I think how we work differently across the health sector but also with consumers, consumer advocacy groups, and other key stakeholders across the system.
(CC) Thank you
