Last Updated : May 12, 2025
Patient group input is vital to the work we do at Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA-AMC). For our drug reimbursement reviews, including the patient perspective provides valuable information and insight to inform our assessment of the evidence and the deliberations of our expert committees that deliver reimbursement recommendations.
As part of our continuous improvement efforts, we have launched a new initiative that aims to evolve our approach to incorporating patient input into our drug reimbursement reviews. In 2024, we updated the reimbursement review process, which describes the deliberative framework that supports and guides expert committees’ discussions during deliberations. The deliberative framework includes 5 domains of value: clinical value, unmet clinical need, distinct social and ethical considerations, economic considerations, and impacts on health systems. The patient perspective is integrated across all 5 domains of the deliberative framework. We recognize that to ensure patient input is incorporated into decision-making for reimbursement reviews, changes are needed to the patient group input submission process.
Patient group input can support an expert committee’s assessment of each domain of value by focusing on information that:
- contextualizes the evidence
- fills gaps in information within the deliberative framework domains
- provides experiences and perspectives beyond the drug under review, including highlighting nonclinical needs and social and ethical considerations
- highlights a range of patient experiences, such as people from different geographical locations or socioeconomic backgrounds, races and/or gender diversities, and stages of disease progression.
On May 8, 2025, CDA-AMC hosted the webinar Evolving Patient Group Input Into Drug Reimbursement Reviews for patients and representatives from patient organizations to learn more about the importance of evolving patient group input, the newly published deliberative framework, and how patients and/or caregivers and patient groups can engage to offer their insights on this project.
Purpose of Feedback
We are inviting interested patient groups and individual patients or caregivers to provide their insight to inform how we evolve patient group input submissions into the drug reimbursement review process. This is the beginning of a series of consultation activities related to including patient group input submissions in the drug reimbursement review process. This may involve disclosing some or all comments, materials, and summaries to the expert committee members.
We are seeking feedback on to how best evolve patient group input to better:
- improve ease of patient input submissions for patient groups, including clarifying processes and requirements and reducing the effort and resources required
- increase transparency of how patient group input is used during expert committee deliberations
- align and focus input on what is needed from patient groups to support deliberations.
We would like to hear from you about how the patient group input process can evolve to focus input on what is needed to support deliberations, while streamlining the input submission process to make it easy to follow and reduce the effort and resources required by you to prepare input submissions. We want to hear your ideas about:
- new ways for submitting patient input
- how to focus input on what is needed to align with the deliberative framework
- what guidance you need to help with your input submission
- the type of communication you would like from us about your input submission.
Related Resources
Evolving Patient Group Input Into Drug Reimbursement Reviews
How to Participate
Representatives from patient organizations and individual patients and/or caregivers are invited to continue the conversation in 1 of 2 ways:
- in writing via online submission
- through small group discussion sessions.
Written Comments
Please fill out this form to provide written comments. Feedback must be received by 5:00 p.m. ET on June 5, 2025. For feedback to be considered, individuals and organizations must be identified by name in the template. One response per organization will be considered.
Small Group Discussions
During small group discussions, CDA-AMC will present a summary of our May 8, 2025, webinar to guide our approach to evolving patient group input submissions into drug reimbursement reviews, which will be followed by a discussion on how we can evolve patient input into drug reimbursement reviews.
To ensure we engage with a diverse range of perspectives, we kindly ask that each patient group designate only 1 representative to attend. This will help us include as many voices as possible in our discussions.
Use this form to register and submit your availability for 1 of the 5 sessions:
May 20, 2025, at 1:00 p.m.
May 27, 2025, at 12:00 p.m.
May 27, 2025, at 2:00 p.m.
May 28, 2025, at 11:00 a.m.
June 5, 2025, at 11:00 a.m.
Questions about the feedback process can be sent to [email protected].
Last Updated : May 12, 2025