NICE seeks urgent fix for slow appraisals
pharmafile | September 29, 2005 | News story | Sales and Marketing |Â Â Â
Patients waiting for access to new, more effective medicines could be prescribed them earlier if new proposals are adopted.
NICE, the body that assesses clinical and cost-effectiveness, has come under renewed pressure in recent weeks to improve access to newer drugs, many of which are for serious and even life-threatening diseases such as cancer.
Chief executive Andrew Dillon has now announced a plan to speed up NICE appraisals of selected new drugs, proposing guidance be produced on these treatments within weeks or months of their launch, rather than the years it currently takes.
Delayed appraisals of cancer drugs have been particularly contentious. In recent months a group of women campaigning for earlier and wider access to Roche's breast cancer treatment Herceptin has attracted national media attention.
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has intervened earlier to order NICE to fast-track the drug after charity CancerBACUP warned the drug would not be more widely available on the NHS until 2007.
NICE's Andrew Dillon is now seeking to create a formal fast track option to help patients and avoid some of the controversies which continue to damage the Institutes reputation.
"We have listened to what patients and healthcare professionals have told us about the need for timely advice on the use of new medicines, particularly for life-threatening conditions such as cancer," said Dillon.
"We have responded by proposing a new, streamlined process for single drugs, and we think these proposals can make a real difference."
NICE is seeking a rapid response from the Department of Health on the proposals which it has submitted, the organisation anticipating a response within the next few weeks.
ABPI spokesman Richard Ley said the fast track idea was welcome, but confirmed that the industry body had not been consulted before the proposals were made public.
In recent years, NICE and the industry have come to agreement on how drugs can be assessed earlier to allow faster approval – though companies fear new products with less data behind them are more likely to not gain recommendation.
Ley said this was a 'balancing act' that NICE had to perform, and defended the body against unfavourable comparisons to the Scottish Medicines Consortium, a similar body north of the border.
"I think [those comparisons] are a little unfair – it does a different job, indicating that the SMC could produce guidance faster because its appraisal was not as in-depth as NICE's analysis."
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