NHS: Innovation

(asked on 23rd November 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how the findings of its Innovation, Health and Wealth report, published in December 2011, were taken into account in the terms of reference of the Accelerated Access Review.


Answered by
George Freeman Portrait
George Freeman
This question was answered on 1st December 2015

The Accelerated Access Review (AAR), chaired by Sir Hugh Taylor, will make recommendations to government on reforms to accelerate access for National Health Service patients to innovative medicines and medical technologies making our country the best place in the world to design, develop and deploy these products. The terms of the reference for the review focus on faster access to innovations, which may include certain off-patent repurposed drugs, as opposed to the routine availability of medicines or medical technologies.


Prior to establishing the terms of reference for the AAR, the Department reviewed evaluation reports and met with officials from previous initiatives on the uptake of innovation in the NHS including the Innovation, Health and Wealth report. As a result, building upon the lessons of previous reviews is explicit with the terms of reference of the AAR.


The AAR has regular meetings with senior officials from NHS England via a steering group as recommendations are being developed. In addition, some staff from NHS England have been assigned to support the review team.


Sir Hugh is still in the process of developing final recommendations which will be published in spring 2016. In his Interim Report published in October, Sir Hugh sets out a proposition on “galvanising the NHS”. This involves supporting the NHS to adopt innovation, more rapidly through better practical support, stronger incentives and the potential streamlining of local structures.


The Department reviewed evaluation reports and met with officials from previous initiatives on the uptake of innovation in the NHS prior to establishing the terms of reference for the AAR. It was clear that whilst progress has been made on the uptake of innovation in the NHS there is still much to do. Sir Hugh and the head of the External Advisory Group, Professor Sir John Bell, set out the case for uptake of innovation in the recently published AAR Interim Report.


The AAR has senior level contact with officials working on Lord Carter’s review of NHS efficiency to ensure that information is shared between the two teams.


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