"But then I read it, and the lady who sent it seemed to know what she was talking about. On LinkedIn she was connected to pharma people I had met, so I thought it was worth pursuing."

There followed a year of countless emails, several in-person meetings and crash courses in apostille documents and the Cyrillic alphabet, but Mr Wonder finally received payment for a one-year subscription to MAESTrO Database from ROSMEDEX last month.

The ROSMEDEX network has since led Mr Wonder to contacts within the Kazakhstan and Colombia HTAs, which he is confident will soon become contracts.

"It just goes to show your customers can come from anywhere these days. My aim now is to be the global reference point for pharma companies and governments wanting to keep track of new healthcare technologies," Mr Wonder said.

User-friendly database

He claimed MAESTrO was the only healthcare technology database that allows users to search and filter by technology type, therapeutic area, disease, patient population and clinical trial phase.

"It makes all the complex information we have about every new and potential treatment available in a way that can be usefully searched," said Mr Wonder.

He regularly visits the websites of the 10 HTAs he covers and uploads most of the information himself, although he subcontracts translators to help with the French and German portals.


"The websites are in multiple formats, they use highly technical language and most of them aren't searchable," Mr Wonder said.

"I know from my previous life how time-consuming it is to go in and get an overview on a particular drug yourself. So hardly anyone does it, which means it's not as clear as it should be whether a government is doing a timely job of supporting their citizens' health."

For instance while the Turnbull Government was applauded this week for approving leukemia drug Imbruvica for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from December 1, reducing its cost per treatment for $187,000 to $38.80, subscribers to Mr Wonder's database could easily see the drug had been subsidised in most Canadian provinces since 2015, and England since the start of this year.

Mr Wonder is now seeking a pharmacist and a full-stack developer to support growth.

The MAESTro Database is owned by Mr Wonder's drug consulting business, Wonder Drug Consulting. Existing subscribers to the database include pharmaceutical companies Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Janssen-Cilag, Lilly, MSD and Novartis.