AstraZeneca Annual Report and Form 20-F Information 2008

How we price our medicines

Despite significant advances in healthcare in recent decades, many diseases are still under-diagnosed or not well treated, or there is not yet an effective therapy. Continued innovation is required to address these unmet medical needs. At the same time, the growing demand for healthcare, driven by people living longer, increasing populations and the emergence of new economies, means ever greater pressure on the payers’ budgets.

At AstraZeneca, our challenge is to balance the associated downward pressure on the price of medicines with the cost of the continued innovation that brings benefit for patients and society.

When setting the price of a medicine, we take into consideration its full value to patients, to those who pay for healthcare and to society in general. Our pricing also takes account of the fact that, as a publicly owned company, we have a duty to ensure that we continue to deliver an appropriate return on investment for our shareholders. We balance many different factors, including ensuring appropriate patient access, in our global pricing policy, which provides the framework for optimising the profitability of our products in a sustainable way.

We continually review our range of medicines (both those on the market and in the pipeline) to identify any that may be regarded as particularly critical to meeting healthcare needs – either because they treat diseases that are (or are becoming) prevalent in developing countries, or because they are potentially a leading or unique therapy addressing an unmet need and offering significant patient benefit in treating a serious or life-threatening condition. In such cases, we aim to provide patient access to these medicines through expanded patient access programmes. We also support the concept of differential pricing in this context, provided that safeguards are in place to ensure that differentially priced products are not diverted from patients who need them, to be sold and used in more affluent markets.

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