Increase in access to non-routine and rare medicines announced

Shona Robison - Scottish Government

New and rare drugs to treat individual cases could become more available to patients, after changes to the approval process were announced.

Health Secretary Shona Robison said she would reform the system based on recommendations published today by an access to medicines review chaired by Dr Brian Montgomery.

These include giving patients more involvement and a national appeals process, and changing the role of the Scottish Medicines Council (SMC).

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Robison challenged pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices to help.

The review monitored the success of the £90m New Medicines Fund, set up in 2014 to cover the cost of ‘ultra-orphan drugs’, and the Peer Approved Clinical System (PACS), which was piloted in Glasgow for the last year then rolled out across the country.

A second tier of PACS will now be rolled out, Robison said, which will include consideration of equity of access with other parts of the UK as a material part of its decision-making process.

“Access to new medicines for rare or end-of-life conditions has substantially increased in recent years, but we wanted to go further. Dr Montgomery’s recommendations will help us realise this,” she said.

“The reforms I am announcing today will help more patients to get better access to treatments that can give them longer, better quality lives.

“The Scottish Government, the SMC and the NHS have worked hard to reform access to new medicines. However, we now need pharmaceutical companies to do their bit by bringing forward much fairer prices for new medicines so that access is as wide as possible for the people of Scotland.”

Dr Montgomery said a “collaborative approach” was needed.

“The key finding from the review was that access to end-of-life, orphan and ultra-orphan medicines has increased,” he said.

“This was confirmed by the feedback received from a wide range of stakeholders who engaged with the review.  Stakeholders also expressed greater satisfaction with the new approach adopted by the Scottish Medicines Consortium.

“The review goes on to highlight the challenge in maintaining the increased levels of access in the future, particularly at a time when an increasing number of exciting new treatments are expected to become available for a number of conditions.”