Dr Brendan Shaw

Recent Speaker

Chief Executive Medicines Australia

November 2, 2011

11.30am - 1.30pm

Where do your medicines come from and why should you care

The Australian Medicines Industry invests more than $1 billion a year in R&D and has annual exports $4 billion – more than the wine and car industries. It employs 14,000 Australians and spends 10 times more than the Federal Government on clinical trials.

But what does that mean for the Australian community and why does it matter to patients?

Dr Brendan Shaw, chief executive of Medicines Australia, will ask Where do your medicines come from and why should you care?
It’s a simple question with a number of complex answers that relate to the role of medicines healthcare , the cost of developing medicines for companies, the value of medicines to the community, and what would happen to the world as we know it if we all woke up one day and suddenly found that there were no medicines.

Dr Shaw has been with Medicines Australia since 2004, as director of health policy and research, and subsequently as chief executive. In that time he has been instrumental in guiding the Australian medicines industry through reforms to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee processes and the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

He represents the industry on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Pricing Authority, the Access to Medicines Working Group, and has served on the Economic Sub-Committee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee.

Before joining Medicines Australia, Dr Shaw worked in academia, consulting and in Federal Government in the areas of economic development, innovation, industry analysis and public policy.

He has an honours degree in economics from the University of Queensland and a PhD in management from Monash University.