In January 2020 the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board released the Meds Entry Watch 2018, which analyses information about medicines approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency or Health Canada in 2017 and 2018.

Consistent with the Canadian Institute for Health Information's December 2019 report (for further details please see "Canadian Institute for Health Information publishes drug spending statistics"), one of the key findings of the Meds Entry Watch 2018 is the continued upward trend in the entry of high-cost products (eg, orphan drugs and oncology products), with nearly two-thirds of the medicines approved internationally in 2017 having treatment costs of more than C$10,000 per year, or C$5,000 per 28-day cycle for oncology medicines.