NICE needs to be reformed with its QALY formula heavily revised if it is to meet the challenges of 21st century medicine, according to the new president of the ABPI.

In his first interview with Pharmafile since becoming the head of the UK pharma lobby group, Jonathan Emms – who is also head of Pfizer UK – tells us he wants a new mandate for NICE.

England’s drug pricing watchdog is currently undergoing a consultation which could change its remit, but Emms says this will not go far enough and wants it to be more pro-innovation.

“We think the intervention should be political, rather than technical,” he says. “NICE’s methods are dominated by a small number of health economists with a certain view of the world and dictated by their methods and their methodologies.”

The main bone of contention for Emms, who has criticised NICE in the past in editorials for The Times newspaper, is its use of QALY – the formula used to assess the cost-effectiveness of new drugs.

 “I don’t think we have to use QALY, that’s the first thing – QALY isn’t applied to all medical interventions, only to medicines, and the threshold hasn’t changed since NICE’s inception in 1999.

“The problem is that by using QALY, you’re always subjecting new medicines to a rather formulaic, algorithmic assessment that no other healthcare system gets. It is important that our medicines are scrutinised in an appropriate way and at the moment, we just feel that the methods and the approach that is taken today, just hasn’t moved with the times sufficiently.

“But on top of that, it’s really important to say that the industry doesn’t want a blank cheque: that’s not our deal with society, the deal with society is producing medicines at the right cost. I just don’t think QALY is always the best method to arrive at the best cost.”

For more details, go to: http://www.pharmafile.com/news/188263/abpi-president-nice-needs-political-reform