Norman Ng, Director of Patient Advocacy and Public Affairs at Healthcare Thinkers, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Building Hope: Funding Support and the Future of Cancer Care From Clinical Breakthroughs to Patient Access: Navigating
Cancer Treatment and Insurance
Realities
A multi-stakeholder seminar gathered clinical experts, pharma representatives, patient advocates, and insurance professionals to tackle accessibility and affordability hurdles of innovative cancer treatments. Core barriers include misalignment between public-private healthcare systems, scarce training for advanced technologies like proton therapy, and prohibitive costs—with some lung cancer drugs hitting HK$60,000/month, compounded by inadequate insurance coverage that pushes over 50% of patients into ‘financial toxicity’. Patient advocate Norman highlighted gaps in Hong Kong’s 2019 Cancer Strategy on healthcare financing.
Stakeholders put forward targeted solutions: patients called for government-led insurance policy improvements and faster mainland drug approvals; insurers proposed outcome-based payments, GBA cross-border care to cut costs, and risk-sharing pools; pharma emphasized balancing R&D returns with patient access; clinicians stressed unmet need assessments and multidisciplinary talent training for advanced therapies.
Consensus was reached on three optimization pillars: Policy (strengthen HTA, expand insurance coverage for high-priced drugs), Mechanism (shift to chronic disease management, adopt outcome-based payments), and Collaboration (integrate GBA medical resources, build a multi-party sustainable ecosystem).”
More posts featuring Norman Ng.
