Last Updated : October 25, 2024
The Canadian Drug Expert Committee (CDEC) is an appointed, pan-Canadian advisory body to Canada’s Drug Agency composed of individuals with expertise in drug therapy, drug evaluation and drug utilization, and public members (for a lay perspective).
As part of the reimbursement review process, CDEC makes reimbursement recommendations for non-oncology pharmaceuticals to the participating federal, provincial, and territorial publicly funded drug plans. It also makes recommendations related to the identification, evaluation, and promotion of optimal drug prescribing and use in Canada.
CDEC's approach is evidence based, and the advice reflects medical and scientific knowledge, current clinical practice, economics, ethical considerations, and patient and public impact.
CDEC is appointed by, and reports to, the President and CEO of Canada’s Drug Agency. Members must abide by our Conflict of Interest Policy and guidelines for Expert Committee and Panel Members and our Code of Conduct. An honorarium is paid to CDEC members for their preparation and meeting time.
Dr. Peter Jamieson is a clinical professor at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, and is a practising family physician and hospitalist. He is the previous Medical Director of the Foothills Medical Centre, a 1,000-bed academic medical centre in Calgary, and is now the Vice President for Quality and Chief Medical Officer for Alberta Health Services. Dr. Jamieson has previously held leadership and expert roles with the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board of Canada, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, the Alberta Medical Association, and the US and Canadian Societies for Hospital Medicine.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Sally Bean is the Director of the Health Ethics Alliance & Policy at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario. Sally earned a BA in Philosophy and English, an MA in Bioethics and Public Policy, and a Juris Doctorate. After law school, Sally completed a two-year fellowship in Clinical & Organizational Ethics through the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. Additionally, she is a member of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, an adjunct lecturer in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and an associate member of the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Mansell is a Professor and Assistant Dean at the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan. His practice and research interests are in the area of diabetes. He teaches various endocrine subjects along with a variety of other pharmacotherapeutic areas to pharmacy students. He is an Associate Editor for the Canadian Journal of Diabetes and is a board member of the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Murthy is a pediatric critical care specialist and clinical epidemiologist and researcher at the University of British Columbia and BC Children’s Hospital. He completed his post-graduate medical training at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (SickKids), with advanced research and health technology assessment training at the University of British Columbia. He is a member of the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute.
Srinivas’ research and clinical expertise is in the management of severely infected patients. He chairs clinical guidelines for provincial, national, and international organizations, including WHO. He is principal investigator on a number of Canadian Institutes of Health Research‒funded, multinational, clinical trials.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Alicia is the Provincial Pharmacy Manager of Clinical Services for Health PEI. She earned a Bachelor of Chemistry at the University of Prince Edward Island and a Bachelor of Pharmacy at Dalhousie, as well as a Master of Health Economics and Pharmacoeconomics at UPF‒the Barcelona School of Management online). Alicia has also worked in a variety of frontline and leadership positions in both Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island as a Provincial Renal Program Pharmacist, Provincial Clinical Oncology Pharmacist, and as a community-based Pharmacy Manager.
Alicia has served on several notable committees and organizations including the Atlantic Expert Advisory Committee for the Atlantic Common Drug Review, the Provincial Drugs and Therapeutics Committee, the Provincial Research Ethics Board, and as President of the Prince Edward Island College of Pharmacy.
Alicia has significant experience in medication-related budget impact assessments, formulary reviews, formulary development and maintenance, and policy creation and review.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Zed is currently Professor and Associate Dean of Practice Innovation in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Associate Member in the Department of Emergency Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He is also the pharmacotherapeutics specialist in Emergency Medicine at Vancouver General Hospital.
In addition to almost 25 years in practice and as an educator, Peter has sustained a productive research program for both clinical and practice-based research, with a consistent record of extramural funding. He has more than 130 peer-reviewed publications, 150 conference research abstracts, and has given more than 350 invited presentations to local, provincial, and national audiences. He has been the recipient of many research, teaching, and service awards.
Peter has a long-standing professional service record serving as chair or member of numerous provincial and national committees including as a member on the Drug Benefits Council in the British Columbia Ministry of Health, as well as the Drug and Therapeutics Advisory Committee for Indigenous Services Canada.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Leong is an Associate Professor at the College of Pharmacy (with a Cross Appointment at the Department of Psychiatry) in the Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, at the University of Manitoba.
Christine received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Toronto and her Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy degree from the University of Manitoba. She also received a Professional Interest Certificate in Pharmacoepidemiology from McGill University.
Christine is a clinical pharmacist, with practice experience in community, hospital, and primary care settings. Her primary area of research is in primary care, mental health, drug use optimization, and psychotropic medication use using pharmacoepidemiology and qualitative methods. Her projects include the use of administrative data from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy to evaluate medication exposure in Manitoba. Christine is also currently a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network Steering Committee.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Mr. Dunsky is a veteran journalist with 25 years of experience in broadcast, print, and digital media. He created and was Executive Producer of The Agenda with Steve Paikin ― Canada’s premier prime-time broadcast of long-form analysis and insight journalism. Prior to that, Dan produced the international affairs program Diplomatic Immunity and worked at CBC’s The National.
From 2016 to 2019, Dan was Vice-President at Public Inc., where he helped businesses and not-for-profits integrate social impact strategies into their organizations’ operations. He is the founder of Dunsky Insight, a strategy and strategic communications consultancy. As an analyst, Dan has appeared on CNN, CTV, and NewsTalk1010, and has written for numerous Canadian and American publications, including The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and The National Interest, and is a regular contributor to the Literary Review of Canada.
A sought-after speaker, Dan talks regularly on the promise and peril of digital change to liberal democratic institutions. His volunteer activities include work with CAMH ― the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health ― and the Toronto Western Hospital.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Morris Joseph is a retired clinical pharmacist with extensive experience in community, hospital, and government practice. He graduated with a BSc in Pharmacy from the University of Toronto. He has a keen interest in advocating for patients’ rights in medical treatment and research and, to that end, is presently serving as a member of the patient–partner working group of the Ontario Support for Strategy for Patient Oriented Research Unit, the College of Lived Experience of Clinical Trials Ontario, and the patient engagement communities of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and the Institute of Clinical Evaluative Sciences. During his career in hospital practice, he served as a drug utilization evaluation pharmacist at the Scarborough Hospital, General Division, where he played an important role in the development of an antibiotic guidelines handbook, resulting in more therapeutically appropriate and cost-effective patient care. In addition, he worked as an individual clinical review pharmacist for the Exceptional Access Program at the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. In this role, he enabled eligible patients to access the required specialized medications and ensured the appropriate use of these medications. For a number of years, he was a part-time caregiver for his late wife, who had chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. He managed to maintain her ability to reside at home by coordinating all of her supportive care and helped her to cope with restricted functional abilities as well as navigate our health care system.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Edward Xie works as an emergency physician at University Health Network and is an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. He completed medical school at the University of Western Ontario, followed by a family medicine residency at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and a fellowship in emergency medicine at McGill University. Dr. Xie received a Master of Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics, and is currently a doctoral student at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. His research on equity in prescription drug insurance systems is supported by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Dr. Xie's academic interests include the policies, economics, and equity of universal health coverage. He also has experience in planetary health and is a Fellow of the Centre for Sustainable Health Systems at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Trudy Huyghebaert is a clinical pharmacist with an active practice in primary care with a focus on appropriate medication use and deprescribing. She is a clinical instructor with Bow Valley College School of Health and Wellness and is involved in precepting PharmD students from the University of Alberta and University of Toronto. She has a clinical appointment as a Clinical Assistant Professor with the Department of Family Medicine, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary.
Trudy received her Doctor of Pharmacy from Idaho State University and her Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the University of Alberta. She also completed her hospital residency at The Ottawa Hospital.
Trudy has practice experience in community, hospital, and primary care settings. Her clinical and research areas of interest are the application of evidence-based medicine, sustainable health care, and chronic disease management (with a special interest in diabetes and chronic pain). Her projects include the development of a primary care evidence-based medicine website, multidisciplinary patient education sessions, and sustainable health care and the role of the pharmacy team. Trudy is currently the co-chair of the National Sustainable Prescribing Working Group with the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Daryl received his Master of Divinity degree from Queen’s University and completed a 2-year Clinical Education residency at Hartford Hospital in Hartford Connecticut. He has worked in the health care field at Kingston Health Sciences Centre as a spiritual health practitioner, psychotherapist, and lead for patient and family-centred care from 1994 through to his retirement in 2019. During that time, he also provided support to people living with HIV incarcerated with Correctional Service of Canada. He has been a proponent for active, meaningful patient participation in health care at the local, provincial, national, and international levels.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Dennis T. Ko obtained his MD from the University of Ottawa, completed his medical residency at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and his cardiology fellowship at Yale School of Medicine. He then completed an interventional cardiology fellowship and a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology at the University of Toronto. He is currently a full professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and a senior scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. He works clinically as an interventional cardiologist at the Schulich Heart Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital and is also the research program director and the inaugural Jack Tu research chair in cardiovascular outcomes research.
Dr. Ko’s research focuses on determining optimal clinical strategies and identifying opportunities for improvement in the prevention, treatment, and outcomes of cardiovascular disease. These research efforts are intended to provide critical information to improve the quality of health care, monitor changes over time, and guide decisions about the allocation of scarce health care resources. Dr. Ko has published more than 300 peer-reviewed publications. He currently holds several leadership positions with the American Heart Association and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society and is the vice chair of the CIHR Institutional Advisory Board.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Marco Solmi is a psychiatrist, and an associate professor and director of research for the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa. He is also a medical director of the On Track: Champlain First Episode Psychosis program and of the eating disorders program at The Ottawa Hospital.
Outside of Canda, he is a scientist with the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy at the Charité University Medicine Berlin, a visiting academic at the University of Southampton, School of Psychology, UK, and an affiliate at the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford.
He is the chair of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Thematic Working Group on Physical And Mental Health (PAN-Health), and a member of other psychiatric associations in Canada and Europe.
He is interested in meta-research and epidemiology, to study prevention and early interventions, psychopharmacology, and physical health in people living with a mental illness.
He has received funding as principal investigator or co-investigator from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and other funding agencies internationally and in Canada. He has authored more than 450 publications in leading medical journals and is among the top 0.1% in Clarivate highly cited researchers in psychiatry and psychology since 2021, as his work has been cited more than 36,000 times.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Dr. Nick Myers is a family physician in Bragg Creek, Alberta, with several decades of broad experience in rural, urban, and international medicine. After undergraduate medical training at the Middlesex Hospital-London University and postgraduate general practitioner vocational training in Northampton, he worked as a general practitioner in the Caribbean and for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK) in West Africa. Since 2004, Nick has combined his clinical community practice with an administrative role as the Medical Director for Primary Care for Alberta Health Services developing Primary Care Networks in Alberta.
He holds an MSc with distinction in Health Economics, Policy, and Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His interests lie in pharmacoeconomics, resource allocation, and health policy.