Clinical trials and drug cost savings for Italian health service
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(2020) 20:1089
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Clinical trials and drug cost savings for Italian health service Francesca D’Ambrosio1, Gianfranco De Feo1, Gerardo Botti1, Arturo Capasso2, Sandro Pignata3, Piera Maiolino4, Maria Triassi5, Antonio Nardone5, Franco Perrone6, Michela Piezzo7, Antonio Maria Grimaldi8, Ida Palazzo4, Immacolata De Stasio4, Roberta D’Aniello4, Alessandro Morabito9* and Giacomo Pascarella1
Abstract Background: The cost of anticancer drugs is constantly growing. The aim of this study was determine the impact in terms of cost reduction for anticancer drug in the Italian Health Service due to patient participation in clinical trials. Methods: We evaluated the cost of drugs administered to patients treated in clinical trials at the National Cancer Institute of Naples in a four-week time period. Patients with a diagnosis of different cancers were considered, including adjuvant therapy and treatment for advanced disease, pharma sponsored and investigator initiated phase I, II and III clinical studies. We defined the expected standard treatment for each patient and we calculated the cost of the standard antineoplastic drugs that should be administered in clinical practice outside clinical trials. We used the market price of drugs to determine the cost savings value. Costs other than drugs were not included in the cost saving calculation. Results: From 23.10.2017 to 17.11.2017, 126 patients were treated in 34 pharma sponsored and investigator initiated clinical trials, using experimental drugs provided free of charge by the sponsors, for an overall number of 152 cycles of therapy. If these patients were treated with conventional therapies in clinical practice the cost of antineoplastic drugs would account for 517,658 Euros, with an average of 5487 Euros saved per patients for a period of 4 weeks. Conclusions: Clinical trials with investigational antineoplastic drugs provided free of charge by Sponsors render considerable cost savings, with a tangible benefit in clinical and administrative strategies to reduce drug expenditures. Keywords: Clinical trials, Cost savings, Treatment costs, Investigational drug, Per-patient cost, Drugs expenditure, Cost reduction
* Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] 9 Thoracic Medical Oncology, Istituto Nazionale Tumori, “Fondazione G.Pascale”, IRCCS, Via Mariano Semmola, 52 –, 80131 Naples, Italy Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material i
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