UK health system spends most on AbbVie's Humira overall, according to HSCIC data on prescribing habits

The Health & Social Care Information Centre has published its report on the prescribing habits of the UK’s National Health Service. Hospital Prescribing: England, 2013-2014 compares expenditure between primary and secondary care in total and for medicines positively appraised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

This showed that overall NHS expenditure on medicines in 2013-2014 was £14.4 billion ($22.78 billion), with use in hospitals accounting for 40.1% of the total cost, up from 37.5% in 2012-2013. The cost of medicines rose 7.6% overall but by 15.1% in hospitals from 2012-2013 to 2013-2014. Of the drugs approved by NICE for prescribing, the greatest overall cost in 2013-2014 was for adalimumab, marketed as Humira by US drugmaker AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV), which also incurred the greatest cost in hospitals. £294 million was spent on Humira in secondary care, with Roche/Novartis’ age-related macular degeneration therapy Lucentis (ranibizumab) coming just behind it with an expenditure of £233 million.

In primary care, the most was spent on insulin glargine, at £78 million, followed by £65 million on buprenorphine.