Medsafe1 is New Zealand's Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority. It's part of the Ministry of Health and is responsible for regulating therapeutic products here.
By overseeing the regulation of therapeutic products, Medsafe plays a cruicial role in protecting public health and ensuring healthcare professionals and consumers have access to safe and effective treatments.
Pharmac2 a.k.a The Pharmaceutical Management Agency, is a crown agency that decides which medicines to fund and manages a fixed budget for them
Their process involves evaluating applications, consulting with clinical experts, assessing costs and benefits, negotiations and consulting with the public.
Getting a medicine publicly funded in New Zealand is a bit complex, and compared with other countries, we don't move very fast.
Click below for a simplified overview:
A medicine needs to be assessed by Medsafe to make sure it's safe and effective.
Registering a medicine is about whether it can be legally supplied here, not whether or not it will be publicly funded.
A supplier, healthcare professional, or even a member of the public can put in an application with Pharmac for public funding.
Pharmac considers a wide range of factors when considering a funding application, including:
Expert advisory committees review the evidence and applications are sometimes sent back for more information.
Only a small number of medicines are funded each year, while many others sit on a waiting list.
Want to know more about the full funding process?
Pharmac's funding processIt's clear that New Zealand isn't leading the pack when it comes to publicly funded access to prescription medicines, we're not even middle of the road.
Compared to countries we think of as peers, like Australia, the UK and Finland our system funds fewer new medicines, and it takes longer to do so.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Numbers, facts, evidence. We've got it all. Here's the data that shows New Zealand's medicines reality.
Below you can find more detail about the sources we've used on this website, and the sources we've used for our social content.
These will be regularly updated as we add new content.
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