ArticleThe Lancet. Public health2022
The economic and public health impact of intellectual property licensing of medicines for low-income and middle-income countries: a modelling study.
Article in The Lancet. Public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Feasibility, safety, efficacy and potential scaling-up of sofosbuvir-based HCV treatment in Central and West Africa: (TAC ANRS 12311 trial).Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- The Effects of Compulsory Licensing: A Case Study of HIV Drugs.Health economics · 2026Article
- Article
- Developing a framework to assess off-patent medicines policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2026Review
- Advancing global health access through market shaping: Cases and learnings.PLOS global public health · 2026Review
- Prices and Affordability of Essential Medicines in 72 Low-, Middle-, and High-Income Markets.JAMA health forum · 2025Article
- Intellectual property licensing of therapeutics during the COVID-19 crisis: lessons learnt for pandemic preparedness and response.Globalization and health · 2024Article
- Negotiating public-health intellectual property licensing agreements to increase access to health technologies: an insider's story.BMJ global health · 2023Review
- Voluntary licensing of long-acting HIV prevention and treatment regimens: using a proven collaboration- and competition-based mechanism to rapidly expand at-scale, sustainable, quality-assured and affordable supplies in LMICs.Journal of the International AIDS Society · 2023Article
- Prospects for Long-Acting Treatments for Hepatitis C.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2022Article
- TRIPS to Where? A Narrative Review of the Empirical Literature on Intellectual Property Licensing Models to Promote Global Diffusion of Essential Medicines.Pharmaceutics · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNon-exclusive voluntary licensing that is access-oriented has been suggested as an option to increase access to medicines to address the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, there has been little research on the effect of licensing, mainly focused on economic and supply chain considerations, and not on the benefits in terms of health outcomes. We aimed to study the economic and health effect of voluntary licensing for medicines for HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs).
methodsA robust modelling framework was created to examine the difference between scenarios, with (factual) and without (counterfactual) a Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) licence for two medicines, dolutegravir and daclatasvir. Data were obtained from MPP licensees, as well as a large number of external sources. The primary outcomes were the cost savings and health impact between scenarios with and without MPP licences across all LMICs. Through its licences, MPP had access to the volumes and prices of licensed generic products sold in all covered countries on a quarterly basis. These data informed the volumes, prices, and uptake for the past factual scenarios and were the basis for modelling the future factual scenarios. These scenarios were then compared with a set of counterfactual scenarios in the absence of the studied licences.
findingsCumulatively, between 2017 and 2032, the model's central assumptions predicted an additional uptake of 15·494 (range 14·406-15·494) million patient-years of dolutegravir-based HIV treatments, 151 839 (34 575-312 973) deaths averted, and US$3·074 (1·837-5·617) billion saved through the MPP licence compared with the counterfactual scenario. For daclatasvir-based HCV treatments, the cumulative effect from 2015 to 2026 was predicted to be an additional uptake of 428 244 (127 584-636 270) patients treated with daclatasvir, 4070 (225-6323) deaths averted, and $107·593 (30·377-121·284) million saved with the licence compared with the counterfactual scenario.
interpretationThe chain of effects linking upstream licensing to downstream outcomes can be modelled. Accordingly, credible quantitative estimates of economic and health effects arising from access-oriented voluntary licensing were obtained based on assumptions that early generic competition leads to price reductions that influence procurement decisions and enable the faster and broader uptake of recommended medicines, with beneficial economic and health effects.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.