It’s been a big week for the drug industry with vows from the Trump administration to enact American Patients First, a new government push to lower prescription drug prices for consumers.

As a first step, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced this morning the agency was rolling out updated web tools, or “drug dashboards,” to give consumers year-over-year pricing on drug pricing and which manufacturers have increased their prices. Consumer drug pricing data has been available for access by the public for quite some time. The source of the data is from claims analysis from Medicare Part D and Medicaid spending.

But the digital tools are aimed at giving consumers new ways to comparison shop prescription drug prices and attempt to bring greater price transparency to the drug market. Data is available for both Medicare and Medicaid. The new dashboards report the percentage change in spending on drugs per dosage unit and includes an expanded list of drugs.

Specifically, consumers that access the dashboard can select a drug and view data in various categories, such as brand name and generic name, a year over year of average spending per dose, total spending for that drug, the number of patients using that drug and the average cost per patient. The dashboard also lists the drug manufacturer and their year-over-year price per dose.

“Publishing how much individual drugs cost from one year to the next will provide much-needed clarity and will empower patients and doctors with the information they need,” says Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma. “The dashboards are interactive online tools that allow patients, clinicians, researchers and the public to understand trends in drug spending, the percentage change in spending on drugs per dosage unit and an expanded list of drugs.”

Spending on prescription drugs covered by Medicare is sky rocketing, the government says. In 2012, Medicare spent 17% of its total budget, or $109 billion, on prescription drugs. Four years later in 2016, spending had increased to 23%, or $174 billion, says the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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