Drug costs down, for now

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 56, No. 1, January February 2014, Page 42 News

Canadians are spending less on prescription drugs for the first time since the Second World War, according to the third edition of the Canadian Rx Atlas, but UBC health economists predict the break will be short lived.

Canadians spent almost $23 billion on prescription drugs in 2012–2013, or $650 per capita. After adjusting for inflation, however, drug spending has decreased by approximately 1%, despite the aging population.

Steve Morgan, a professor with the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health, and the Rx Atlas’s lead author, analyzed drug spending data from 2007 to 2013 for this edition of the Rx Atlas and found that more than one-third of drugs being developed by the pharmaceutical industry are specialized (niche) drugs that will come to market at considerable cost. While not as widely used, specialty drugs are much more expensive.

. Drug costs down, for now. BCMJ, Vol. 56, No. 1, January, February, 2014, Page(s) 42 - News.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply