Posted by Michael Wonder on 24 Oct 2019
NHSE signs ‘definitive’ agreement for Vertex CF drugs
24 October 2019 - NHS England has announced a definitive agreement with Vertex Pharmaceuticals to make all three of their UK-licensed cystic fibrosis medicines available - Orkambi (ivacaftor/lumacaftor), Symkevi (tezacaftor/ivacaftor) and Kalydeco (ivacaftor).
The road to the approval has been a long arduous one, with the heavily documented rise of Orkambi to the market being a controversial process, as the company initially refused to drop the staggering price of £104,000 per patient per year to make it affordable to the NHS.
The pricing meant that The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence had deemed it not cost effective, and the Scottish Medicines Consortium also cited its rejection reasons as “uncertainties in the company’s evidence about the long term health benefits of both medicines in relation to their costs.”
