Source: PHARMAC
Pharmac’s Prioritisation Update provides the latest information about applications for medicines, vaccines, and related products that we’ve assessed for funding. Proactively releasing this information is part of our ongoing commitment to transparency.
Application priority lists
Every year we receive over 100 funding applications from health care professionals, consumer groups and suppliers. These applications include requests to fund new medicines and to widen access to medicines that we already fund.
We ask our clinical advisory committees to assess the available evidence and recommend whether we should fund, defer, or decline the applications. With their advice, we work to complete an assessment, including a health economic appraisal if required.
We apply the Factors for Consideration throughout our assessment of an application. The factors consider four areas: health need, health benefit, suitability, and costs and savings.
Read more about the Factors for Consideration on our website.
Once the assessment is complete, we take the application to a quarterly internal prioritisation meeting and add applications to one of the following priority lists:
- options for investment (OFI)
- only funded if cost neutral or cost saving
- recommended for decline.
Read more about our priority lists for funding applications
Proposals funded since December 2025
The following treatments have been funded, and therefore removed from the OFI, since the last meeting on 3 December.
Options for investment list
We rank applications on our options for investment (OFI) list from highest to lowest priority but keep these rankings confidential so that we can negotiate the best prices with suppliers.
As of 15 March 2026, there are 139 applications on the OFI.
Prioritisation activity in the March quarter
During the March prioritisation quarter, we ranked seven new proposals on the OFI list.
New proposals ranked:
Only if cost neutral or cost saving list
If our assessment confirms an application does not provide any additional health benefit compared to treatments we already fund, it may be ranked on the only if cost-neutral or cost-saving list. We would look to fund these applications if we negotiated a deal that would be cost-neutral or cost-saving.
Prioritisation activity in the March quarter
During the March quarter, we ranked 4 applications on the only if cost neutral or cost saving list):
- AEON Protect(external link) – for Dry Eye Disease, a condition where the eyes do not make enough tears, so the eyes are not properly lubricated.
- AEON Protect Plus(external link) – for Dry Eye Disease, a condition where the eyes do not make enough tears, so the eyes are not properly lubricated.
- AEON Repair(external link) – for Dry Eye Disease, a condition where the eyes do not make enough tears, so the eyes are not properly lubricated.
- Pretomanid(external link) – Multi drug-resistant Tuberculosis and Extensively drug-resistant Tuberculosis.
Recommended for decline list
There are a range of reasons a funding application may be added to the recommend for decline list. Our expert clinical advisors may have recommended that the funding application be declined, or they may have recommended we fund the medicine, but during our analysis we’ve found:
- There is a more effective medicine for the same condition already funded
- the medicine would provide no additional benefits over other treatments we already fund
- the medicine may be harmful
- the application has been overtaken by another funding application for the same medicine
- no company is supplying the medicine in New Zealand.
When applications are added to the recommended for decline list, they become inactive, and we stop working on the application. While applications may be listed on the decline list, they are only formally declined after public consultation to ensure we haven’t missed anything important.
Read more about this process: Declining inactive funding applications
Declining an application doesn’t prevent us from reconsidering funding for the medicine in the future if new information becomes available.
Prioritisation activity in the March quarter
During the March quarter we ranked 9 applications on the recommended for decline list (detailed descriptions of indications available on the Application Tracker):
* The assessment of these applications will now take place as one proposal, for nivolumab or pembrolizumab(external link), for first line treatment of oesophageal or gastroesophageal junction cancer (including squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma) or gastric cancer.
