From today’s Financial Times:
Advisory body faces critics on drug payments
By Andrew Jack, Pharmaceutical Correspondent
The government's medicines advisory body meets critics today to debate changes to the way it decides whether the National Health Service pays for costly new drugs.
Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, who is chairing a review triggered by attacks on the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, will hear complaints from the pharmaceutical industry, patients and academics that it it does not take sufficient account of innovation.
The hearings, drawing on more than 40 organisations, follow worries that Nice risks slowing research into new medicines by rejecting those with promise but which are seen as too expensive for the benefit that they provide.
His study follows last year's attacks on Nice when it advised against the NHS paying for costly cancer drugs. Topics set for discussion in the two-day consultation include whether the government should become more involved in funding clinical trials as a way to share the risks of costly new drug development with the pharmaceutical industry.
Patient groups argue that assessments for drugs such as those for Alzheimer's disease fail to take into account the relief they provide in terms of broader social care costs outside the health system, which is beyond Nice's authority. Others criticise the way in which Nice calculates the quality-adjusted life years by which it judges the value of a medicine, and questions whether it adequately assesses the severity of some conditions.
However, the Commons health committee last week warned that a move to allow Nice to approve more costly drugs of limited benefit risked taking away scarce resources from other medicines with greater demonstrable benefit.
More as more develops.
