Medical Technologies and Treatment: Accelerated Access Review
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debate
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jackie Doyle-Price)
Today, the Government and its partners (NHS England, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, National Institute for Health Research, Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, NHS Improvement, Academic Health Science Networks) are publishing a joint commitment to deliver the vision of the independently chaired accelerated access review (AAR). We thank Sir Hugh Taylor and his team for their excellent work to develop the compelling arguments and recommendations in the AAR.
The Government’s ambition is that NHS patients should be among the first in the world to get life-changing treatments. Achieving this goal is only possible by working in close partnership with our world-leading life sciences sector. Our response to the accelerated access review (AAR) sets out how we will work with industry and the health system to create a streamlined and sophisticated approvals system so that cost-effective breakthrough products—be they drugs, devices, digital or diagnostics—can get to NHS patients as fast as possible.
There are already many excellent examples of innovation taking place across the NHS, including world-leading advances in genetic technology, new treatments for conditions such as hepatitis C and ground-breaking methods to diagnose conditions. We are committed to building on this excellent work to ensure that the NHS is one of the most pro-innovation healthcare systems in the world, and that it is recognised as such by patients and industry.
It is essential that we balance our commitment to accelerating patient access to life-changing treatments with the financial sustainability of the NHS. To achieve this, it will be vital that our policies are affordable for the NHS and deliver value for money to the taxpayer. We shall leverage our world-leading research base and the NHS’s status as the biggest single-payer healthcare system to make the UK even more competitive and attractive to industry as a place to design, develop and deploy innovative products.
Key elements of our response include:
A new accelerated access collaborative (AAC) chaired by Sir Andrew Witty, that will develop an accelerated access pathway (AAP) to bring breakthrough products to market and then to patients as quickly as possible—streamlining regulatory and market access decisions.
£86m Government funding to support innovators and the NHS in overcoming barriers to getting new, innovative technologies to patients quickly.
Improved NHS England commercial capacity and capability to deliver deals that achieve better value for the NHS and innovators.
The AAR response (17-11-03 AAR Response FINAL.pdf) can be viewed online at:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2017-11-03/HCWS223/.
[HCWS223]