ICR warns NICE over failing to incentivize pharma

Proposed reforms to the way that the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) assesses whether drugs deserve reimbursement in the UK have been criticized for not going far enough.

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, argues that oncology patients will miss out on exciting new treatments via the National Health Service after the NICE ‘passed up a golden opportunity’ to ensure its evaluation methods support approval of the most innovative, potentially game-changing drugs.

"We want to see an appraisal system that incentivizes the discovery and development of the most cutting-edge new treatments"According to the ICR, too little has been done to favor drugs with innovative mechanisms of action, speed up approval of new drugs, or remove barriers to drug approval for rare diseases such as children’s cancer.