NHS: Drugs

(asked on 16th November 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to raise awareness of biosimilar medicines amongst NHS healthcare professionals.


Answered by
George Freeman Portrait
George Freeman
This question was answered on 23rd November 2015

A biosimilar sub group of the Pharmaceutical Market Supply Group was established in October 2012; composed of NHS procurement pharmacists and representatives of the Department’s Commercial Medicines Unit, to help the National Health Service achieve benefits from new biosimilar molecules by helping remove obstacles to successful market launches and to encourage uptake.

The Accelerated Access Review, chaired by Sir Hugh Taylor, will make recommendations to government on reforms to accelerate access for NHS patients to innovative medicines and medical technologies, including biosimilar products, making our country the best place in the world to design, develop and deploy these products. This will cover products that may already be on the market and off patent but are being innovatively repurposed to treat conditions other than those in remit of the existing license.


Given their system leadership role, NHS England has established a programme of work to increase awareness, understanding and confidence amongst decision makers, such as commissioners, clinicians, pharmacists, patients and others in their consideration of the appropriate use of biosimilar medicines.


In January this year, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) updated its methods for providing guidance and advice on biosimilar medicines and in August, it published a position statement on biosimilar medicines which sets out its approach:


http://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/evaluating-biosimilar-medicines

http://www.nice.org.uk/Media/Default/About/what-we-do/NICE-guidance/NICE-technology-appraisals/Biosimilars%20position%20statement%20-%20updated%20June%202015.pdf


In addition, NICE’s health technology adoption programme has produced a specific resource about Infliximab biosimilars relating to the technology appraisal for infliximab, adalimumab and golimumab for moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis after the failure of conventional therapy (TA329). The resource which is presented as a series of examples of current practice, provides practical information and advice on the use of biosimilar versions of Infliximab and is intended for use by both clinical and non-clinical staff considering the introduction of these biosimilar medicines into the NHS:


http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta329/resources/nice-technology-appraisal-adoption-support-for-introducing-biosimilar-versions-of-infliximab-inflectra-and-remsima-493818736/chapter/1-Introduction

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