Utilization of Cholinesterase Inhibitors for Alzheimer Disease in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Due to upcoming Canadian market approvals of biologics for Alzheimer disease, a utilization study was conducted to assess the current utilization patterns and funding criteria for cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEIs) in selected Canadian jurisdictions from 2017 to 2020. Most jurisdictions list ChEIs as exception status, special authorization, or limited use drugs except Manitoba; as of 2018, Manitoba lists donepezil and galantamine as regular benefits and rivastigmine as an exception status drug. Additionally, British Columbia and New Brunswick fund galantamine and rivastigmine after a patient is deemed intolerant to donepezil. The following are insights from the utilization analysis. Across Canada, there has been a decrease in the number of beneficiaries and claims for all ChEIs from 2017 to 2020 in all jurisdictions except Manitoba: There was a 12% reduction in number of beneficiaries and a 17% reduction in the number of total claims from 2017 to 2020. In Manitoba, there was an increase in the number of ChEI beneficiaries that peaked in 2018, which corresponds to the formulary changes for donepezil and galantamine during this period. Across Canada, donepezil had the highest market share among all ChEIs each year from 2017 to 2020, which increased from 71.2% in 2017 to 75.8% in 2020. Galantamine had the second-highest market share each year. The market shares for both galantamine and rivastigmine decreased over time, indicating there is a preference for prescribing donepezil to patients with Alzheimer disease. The greater use of donepezil may be explained by prescriber preferences or coverage criteria for ChEIs (e.g., donepezil is considered first line in British Columbia and New Brunswick). The cumulative costs of all ChEIs paid for by public drug plans across Canada in 2020 was $20,659,136, a decrease of 43% from $36,325,781 in 2017, which corresponds with the decrease in the total number of ChEI beneficiaries. Donepezil had the highest national total costs, followed by galantamine, then rivastigmine, which corresponds to the market share for each of these drugs. However, on a cost-per-beneficiary basis, donepezil was associated with the lowest cost estimates in each year from 2017 to 2020.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".