News

Updates for Patient Groups - October 2014

Technical difficulties resolved for patient input submissions

We’ve had a few technical problems recently with our Common Drug Review patient input online submission system. Thank you for your patience and understanding while we investigated and fixed the problem. We’ve added  new safeguards to enable us to closer track submissions into our automated system. In addition to the online confirmation, groups will now receive an email confirmation once their input has been successfully uploaded. And submissions can now be uploaded until midnight on the date of the specified deadline, in all Canadian time zones.

Travel awards to 2015 CADTH Symposium

For the first time, we’re offering funding to help patient group representatives attend the CADTH Symposium — with the 2015 event set to take place in Saskatoon. The CADTH Symposium is a three-day event of workshops, presentations, and networking to discuss health system sustainability and how to improve health outcomes. Submit an abstract for the symposium by October 31, 2014; and /or a travel award application by December 5, 2014.

Reminder: Include conflict of interest declarations in patient input submissions

Please remember to specify the sources of funding that your organization receives in your patient input submission.  Please include names of all manufacturers and not just the manufacturer of the drug under review.  Declaration of conflict of interest does not negate or preclude the use of patient input.  See section 1.2 of the Patient Input Template for more information.  

Everyone who participates in the CADTH Common Drug Review is asked to provide confliction of interest information. Recently we have needed to contact some patient groups to provide this information.

Addressing the CADTH Common Drug Review backlog

We have started to make a dent into the Common Drug Review backlog. It continues to be a high priority for CADTH. You can follow the progress of specific drugs using the CDR drug database. Drugs will move from being listed as “queued” to “active” the day their review begins.

Patient Input Submission Tip

Use of one or two direct patient quotes to illustrate key points of your submission is helpful to reviewers and Canadian Drug Expert Committee members. A single strong quote is often more useful than having several similar quotes.