The IMF will have £340m a year of funding. This is in addition to the £340m already available for the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), creating a ringfenced funding total of £680m.
The IMF will support patients with any condition, including those with rare and genetic diseases, to get early access to the most clinically promising treatments where further data is needed to support the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in making final recommendations around their routine use in the NHS.
An estimated one in 17 people will be affected by a rare disease in their lifetime. The aim of the IMF is to support the NHS with fast-tracking patient access to treatments that demonstrate substantial clinical promise but face significant uncertainty around their clinical and cost effectiveness and hence long-term value for taxpayers.
NHS England has provided the following eight principles for the IMF in the consultation:
- the product addresses a high unmet need
- the product provides significant clinical benefits
- the product represents a step-change in treatment for patients and clinicians
- evidential uncertainties can be resolved in a reasonable time
The consultation which asks a series of questions is now available on the NHS England web site.
This is all part of the Government's commitment to backing the life sciences industry and driving innovation, including through early adoption of new treatments within the NHS. It is an initiative that has widely excited pharma. Great policies like the IMF help to explain why, in a recent survey of 220 global C-suite respondents in pharma carried out by IQVIA, 88% said they were going to place more clinical trials and launch more medicines in the UK.
The consultation had been delayed due to the focus on other priorities during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it is pleasing to see that it is now published. In the meantime, even before the commencement of the IMF, NHS England has entered into deals to enable access to medicines that had promise, such as crizanlizumab for people with sickle cell disease.
At the 2021 PING Conference, which was held in collaboration with IQVIA, entitled "UK Life Sciences Opportunities in a Changed World", we heard from Claire Foreman, the Director of Medicines Policy and Strategy at NHS England. Claire discussed the support for adoption of medicines throughout the NHS and the Innovative Medicines Fund amongst other changes in medicines priorities including opportunities for re-purposing medicines. Other speakers at the conference including the Pfizer UK Country Manager and ABPI President, Ben Osborn, also talked about the importance of valuing innovation and the NHS being an early adopter of innovation.