Dr. Nigel Rawson

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Dr. Nigel Rawson is a pharmacoepidemiologists and pharmaceutical policy researcher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Educated in the United Kingdom, he holds an MSc in statistics and a PhD in pharmacoepidemiology. Dr. Rawson has performed epidemiologic studies of the use of drugs and their outcomes for over 40 years and published more than 150 book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is also the author of the monograph “Drug Safety: Problems, Pitfalls and Solutions in Identifying and Evaluating Risk.”

Dr. Rawson held academic research positions in the United Kingdom until the end of 1989 and subsequently held professorships at the University of Saskatchewan and Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. His research activities focused on population-based studies of the use and safety of drugs using administrative healthcare utilization data and the evaluation of issues impacting access to new drugs. Dr. Rawson has also been a senior researcher in an independent research centre in one of the United States’ largest health insurers, where he collaborated with the Food and Drug Administration on drug safety studies, and GlaxoSmithKline’s only epidemiologist in Canada, providing advice and analysis for the company’s current and developing medicines and vaccines. Between 2012 and 2020, Dr. Rawson was President of Eastlake Research Group whose mission was to create evidence-based responses to pharmaceutical and health policy issues. He continues this work as an independent researcher.

Recent Research by Dr. Nigel Rawson

— Apr 12, 2023
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Waiting for New Medicines: How Does Canada Compare to the United States and Europe?

Waiting for New Medicines: How Does Canada Compare to the United States and Europe? finds that, due to government barriers, Canadians have access to fewer new drugs than Americans and Europeans.

— Aug 28, 2018
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Regulatory, Reimbursement, and Pricing Barriers to Accessing Drugs for Rare Disorders in Canada

Regulatory, Reimbursement and Pricing Barriers to Accessing Drugs for Rare Disorders in Canada finds that the federal government’s plan to increasingly regulate the costs of pharmaceuticals could mean Canadians suffering from cystic fibrosis and other rare diseases may soon lose access to new innovative drug treatments, even though these patients are already denied new drugs available elsewhere.

— Jul 17, 2014
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The organization that reviews oncology medicines in Canada may unnecessarily delay approvals while cancer patients suffer, finds a new study by Nigel Rawson. The study, Has pCODR Improved Access to Oncology Drugs?, spotlights the pan-Canadian Oncology Drug Review (pCODR), which recommends new oncology drugs to the provinces and territories (excluding Quebec) after clinical and cost-effectiveness assessments. The pCODR was established in 2010.