#health

Our Blog

See below for an opinion on current matters around the world.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: 5 years of Shawview Consulting blogs

Brendan Shaw

Nov 29, 2022
5 min

From the sublime to the ridiculous: 5 years of Shawview Consulting blogs

Brendan Shaw Every month since I first started Shawview Consulting back in 2017, I have written a blog. Shawview has just celebrated its five-year anniversary, and ever since I first started the business from my living room in our old house in inner London, I’ve tried to write something every month. Usually a blog, sometimes an article or opinion piece and occasionally a peer-reviewed academic article. I’ve tried to keep the discipline of writing something each month partly t

108 views0 comments

Lessons learned: finance and resilience in post-COVID health systems

Brendan Shaw

Jul 24, 2022
6 min

Lessons learned: finance and resilience in post-COVID health systems

Brendan Shaw “If you staff at maximum capacity, well, then you have to price and cost for maximum capacity at all times. But then do you just accept that for big chunks of the year you have overcapacity?” - Manny Maceda, CEO, Bain & Co. “In the longer term, the focus should be on capital and capacity – beds, diagnostic equipment and IT. This is the biggest yet often least-discussed bottleneck hampering a patient’s flow through the system.” - John Burn-Murdoch, “

78 views0 comments

Jane Fonda, mix tapes & Australia's 5% discount rate: when time, health economics and ethics collide

Brendan Shaw

Mar 24, 2022
6 min

Jane Fonda, mix tapes & Australia's 5% discount rate: when time, health economics and ethics collide

Brendan Shaw How much do you value your future health? How much do you value the future health of your kids and your grandkids? And how much do you think the Australian government values these things? Well, based on our recent report on the matter … not much! A recent report for Medicines Australia prepared by Biointelect and Shawview Consulting, Submission to the PBAC on the Base Case Discount Rate, reviewed the discount rate that Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory

205 views0 comments

It’s the economy, stupid: the economic benefits of health spending

Brendan Shaw

Feb 23, 2022
5 min

It’s the economy, stupid: the economic benefits of health spending

Brendan Shaw “Economic activity contracted in 90 per cent of the world’s countries in 2020. This exceeded the proportion hit by the two world wars, the Great Depression and the global financial crisis. A pandemic, we now know, is a comprehensive disaster.” - Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times, 16 February 2022 "The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has already led to millions of deaths, job losses, business failures, and school closings, triggering the

94 views0 comments

Is 2022 the Pharma Industry’s ‘Call of Duty’ Moment?

Brendan Shaw

Feb 1, 2022
1 min

Is 2022 the Pharma Industry’s ‘Call of Duty’ Moment?

Brendan Shaw Article published in PharmaBoardroom on 1 February 2022 on key trends for 2022 can be found here. #pharma #health #vaccines #2022 #politics #government #technology

16 views0 comments

More risk for government this time around in agreement negotiation

Brendan Shaw

Apr 8, 2021
1 min

More risk for government this time around in agreement negotiation

Brendan Shaw Article published in BioPharmaDispatch 9 April 2021 on the risks for government and industry in negotiations on a new strategic agreement for Australia's medicines policy can be found here (paywall). #medicines #Australia #PBS #government #industry #health

7 views0 comments

COVID-19 vaccination a 12-month success for science, governments and industry

Brendan Shaw

Dec 2, 2020
4 min

COVID-19 vaccination a 12-month success for science, governments and industry

Brendan Shaw The news just in that the United Kingdom has formally approved the roll out of mass vaccinations for COVID-19 from next week is a moment to mark. The UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved the 95% effective vaccine to vaccinate the British population yesterday after and "an extremely thorough and scientifically rigorous review of all the evidence". From next week, the UK's National Health Service will start rolling out the initia

28 views0 comments

Non-communicable diseases and the global countdown to 2030

Brendan Shaw

Nov 3, 2020
6 min

Non-communicable diseases and the global countdown to 2030

Brendan Shaw “Although premature mortality from NCDs is declining in most countries, for most the pace of change is too slow to achieve SDG target 3.4.“ - NCD Countdown 2030, The Lancet, 2020 In a little over 10 years from now – about 122 months or 3,700 days from today – the world will be evaluating how it has gone in achieving the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. These were agreed by all nations at the 2015 UN General Assembly as key goals for the global c

72 views0 comments

The next 20-year PBS agenda: government commitments to new medicines spending

Brendan Shaw

Oct 14, 2020
3 min

The next 20-year PBS agenda: government commitments to new medicines spending

Brendan Shaw If it's real and if it sticks, the Australian government’s ‘New Medicines Funding Guarantee’ will be a significant improvement to Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The first Intergenerational Report released in 2002 by the then Australian government painted a doomsday scenario of the PBS becoming one of the major causes of government expenditure growth over the next 40 years. Back then it predicted that the PBS would equal 3.4% of GDP by 2042. Even at t

122 views0 comments

This could get messy: Trump’s New ‘Most Favoured Nation’ Executive Order on Medicine Pricing

Brendan Shaw

Sep 23, 2020
1 min

This could get messy: Trump’s New ‘Most Favoured Nation’ Executive Order on Medicine Pricing

Brendan Shaw Article published 24 September 2020 in PharmaBoardroom on US President Donald Trump's new Executive Order on Most Favoured Nation medicine pricing and its potential impacts on medicines pricing and availability in other high income countries. #medicine #price #health #usa #australia #reimbursement #trade #Trump

19 views0 comments

What would Dr Who say?: Time travel and the macroeconomic impact of COVID-19

Brendan Shaw

Sep 3, 2020
7 min

What would Dr Who say?: Time travel and the macroeconomic impact of COVID-19

Brendan Shaw “… governments need to be convinced that investing in public health systems is absolutely necessary despite the multitude of competing demands for scarce budget resources. The current under-preparedness of many countries indicates that this case has not been convincingly made.” - World Bank. 2017. From Panic and Neglect to Investing in Health Security: Financing Preparedness at a National Level, p. 6. Imagine a world political leader, a president or prime ministe

67 views0 comments

Global trends in cardiovascular deaths: 30 years of country data

Brendan Shaw

Jun 30, 2020
6 min

Global trends in cardiovascular deaths: 30 years of country data

Brendan Shaw More people on the planet die from cardiovascular disease than any other illness or injury. Cardiovascular disease is defined as disorders of the heart and blood vessels. It includes coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, rheumatic heart disease and other conditions. Four out of five deaths from cardiovascular disease occur due to heart attacks and stroke and one-third of deaths occur prematurely to people under the age of 70. Global trends Cardiovascul

277 views0 comments

Spanish Flu vs COVID-19: medical technology and health system resilience

Brendan Shaw

Jun 21, 2020
1 min

Spanish Flu vs COVID-19: medical technology and health system resilience

Brendan Shaw Blog published on Medium on 22 June 2020 can be found here. #COVID-19 #health #technology #resilience #funding

23 views0 comments

Covid-19 - So how are we doing? Lessons from USA, UK and France and how to move forward

Brendan Shaw

Jun 13, 2020
6 min

Covid-19 - So how are we doing? Lessons from USA, UK and France and how to move forward

Rob Hnatuk, Ben Deaville and Jon Bastow* As lifelong friends resident in the USA, UK and France respectively we have been speaking weekly as the Covid-19 pandemic has unfolded. We all have an interest in healthcare and have been comparing progress in our respective countries and speculating on different strategies and how they will impact. Below we share data and discuss the varying approaches to distancing, mask-wearing and contact tracing. The views expressed are our own an

331 views0 comments

Creeping Through the Backdoor: Disruption in Medicine and Health

Brendan Shaw

Jun 10, 2020
1 min

Creeping Through the Backdoor: Disruption in Medicine and Health

Brendan Shaw and Orin Chisholm Article published in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology on 10 June 2020 on whether health systems can manage disruption. The article can be read here. #disruption #medicine #health #economics #innovation #policy

14 views0 comments

When resilience trumps efficiency in healthcare

Brendan Shaw

May 11, 2020
5 min

When resilience trumps efficiency in healthcare

“Global capitalism will have to be re-balanced. The pre-COVID balance between efficiency and resilience will have to tilt on the side of resilience.” - Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the World Trade Organization, 2020 “… the notions of viability and resilience … are in conflict with short-term profitability and apparent efficiency.” - Hynes et al., 2020, A Systemic Approach to Dealing with COVID-19 and Future Shocks, OECD. “We should have learned the lesson of resili

257 views0 comments

'Coronavirus is yucky': a pandemic through the eyes of kids

Brendan Shaw

Apr 11, 2020
4 min

'Coronavirus is yucky': a pandemic through the eyes of kids

My five-year-old niece has nailed it. While there are reams of news stories, pages of medical advice, hundreds of learned online published articles and millions upon millions of words in opinion pieces and online blogs, my niece has put the whole Covid-19 outbreak in simple language. And just as the Covid-19 outbreak happened in China during the Lunar New Year holiday period when families travel and reunite, it is particularly yucky at this time of year when in many countries

51 views0 comments

Biopharmaceutical industry comes through in dealing with Ebola

Brendan Shaw

Sep 1, 2019
4 min

Biopharmaceutical industry comes through in dealing with Ebola

Recent news that two new drugs to treat the Ebola virus developed by the biopharmaceutical industry have achieved a 90% cure rate is welcome news. Breakthrough technology The two newest drugs that were undergoing clinical trial were so successful, that the trial’s independent monitoring committee recommended the trial be cancelled early and all patients in the trial switched over to the new medicines. These treatments developed by Regeneron and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, in p

49 views0 comments

History Repeats with the Release of the 2019 WHO Essential Medicines List

Brendan Shaw

Aug 3, 2019
1 min

History Repeats with the Release of the 2019 WHO Essential Medicines List

Article published in PharmaBoardroom on 2 August 2019. The article can be found here: https://pharmaboardroom.com/articles/history-repeats-with-the-release-of-the-2019-who-essential-medicines-list/. #WHO #EML #medicine #accesstomedicines #pharmaceutical #health

7 views0 comments

Brendan Shaw

Jun 20, 2019
5 min

HTA 2.0: time for a reboot

A few days spent at the Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi) 2019 conference in Cologne this week gave a sense of how the practice of health technology assessment (HTA) needs to develop beyond 2020. The issues and debates at HTAi this year showed that the simple HTA processes some of us grew up with earlier in our careers are now in need of a refresh. Changes in society and health care systems around the world that mean that HTA needs to evolve if it is to be fit

197 views0 comments