Innovative policy will combat rising cancer rates

Subject

Cancer advances.

Significance

Cancer diagnoses are rising, but so are means to treat it. Advances in R&D and medicines coming to market more quickly fuel optimism. However, treatment regimes and costs are advancing together, increasing the complexity of the decisions the public and private sector face concerning access to and administration of treatments.

Impacts

• Low- and middle-income countries' spending on health data systems will need to keep up with the availability of medicines to drive policy.
• As treatments become more individualised, the patient pool of those benefiting from a therapy will become smaller.
• Many more factors being used to decide which therapies to pursue for a patient will allow patients to be increasingly segmented.
• Individualised cures and therapies' costs and side effects will reshape patient advocacy and the assessment of risk-benefit profiles.