The Daily Mail front page article of 16 May 2012, ‘New cancer drugs held up by the NHS for nine years’ purports to draw, as its source, from a report by the Office of Health Economics. The Daily Mail article…
The Daily Mail front page article of 16 May 2012, ‘New cancer drugs held up by the NHS for nine years’ purports to draw, as its source, from a report by the Office of Health Economics. The Daily Mail article is misleading and inaccurate in several key respects, and misrepresents the purpose and results of our study. Our report, Time Trends in NICE HTA Decisions, was published in January 2012.
The Daily Mail front page article of 16 May 2012, ‘New cancer drugs held up by the NHS for nine years’ purports to draw, as its source, from a report by the Office of Health Economics. The Daily Mail article is misleading and inaccurate in several key respects, and misrepresents the purpose and results of our study.
Our report, Time Trends in NICE HTA Decisions, was published in January 2012. The study is not about cancer medicines; nor is it specifically about new medicines (since NICE’s work is not restricted to that). Nowhere in our report do we suggest that new medicines are being delayed by up to nine years as a result of NICE’s decision making process.
We looked at completed appraisals between March 2000 and December 2010. The key findings from our report, with respect to the speed with which NICE makes its recommendations, were that:
We also analysed the time elapsed between the launch of a medicine and the publication of NICE guidance. Our finding was that, of those medicines considered since NICE was established, the median time from launch to publication is 5.0 years (5.5 years for MTAs and 2.6 for STAs). These figures are of interest to patients and to companies as positive NICE guidance means funding must be made available. They cannot be interpreted as a failure by NICE because:
There are differences, however, between our findings with respect the time taken in HTA processes, and NICE’s own assessment of this. NICE has a number of process indicators, that provide an insight into NICE’s own benchmarking of its HTA process. These focus on the aspects of the process over which NICE has most control.
Differences between OHE’s assessment of the timeliness of NICE processes and NICE’s own benchmarking of its performance arise from the fact that we each are measuring different things in different ways. The key differences are most easily understood in the context of two questions.
Which medicines are included in the analysis?
How is the start and finish of NICE’s process measured?
Each represents a different, but legitimate and useful way, of measuring the time taken in HTA. For further comment on time trends in NICE HTA decision making, see NICE’s comments from Andrew Dillon.
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