Canadian Trends in Estimated Drug Purchases and Projections: 2024 and 2025

Key Messages

What Is the issue?

• Data on trends in the pharmaceutical market remain limited. We offer an annual update on estimated drug purchases in Canada and highlight key factors that could impact future spending.

What Did We do?

• We conducted a retrospective time-series analysis of annual estimated drug purchases across Canada between 2001 and 2023 using IQVIA’s Canadian Drugstore and Hospital Purchases Audit.
• We calculated total estimated drug purchases and relative percentage change annually, stratified by sector (retail and hospital), and forecast annual spending to 2025.

What Did We Find?

• Total estimated drug purchases for 2023 were approximately $43.5 billion, 13.7% higher than in 2022.
• Overall, expenditure on the top 25 high-cost drugs accounted for 32.5% and 53.3% of total spending in the retail and hospital sectors, respectively.
• Pharmaceutical spending has grown over the past 2 decades, with an annual average growth of 5.8% and 8.2% in the retail and hospital sectors, respectively.
• Drug expenditure in the retail sector is expected to increase annually by 10.9% to 10.1% and spending within the hospital sector is expected to increase by 14.6% to 12.9% for 2024 and 2025, respectively.

What Does This Mean?

• The accelerated growth in overall estimated drug purchases is likely driven by the increasing use of new diabetes and obesity treatments.
• Continued growth in drug purchases is projected across the Canadian market, which will be influenced by new approvals of specialty and oncology drugs, as well as generic and biosimilar versions of the top 25 drugs.
• Without measures to address this ongoing increase in pharmaceutical spending, there may be a need to reallocate funds from other public sectors or shift costs to private industry and patients.