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Doctors will be forced to provide more effective treatments to patients under proposed reforms to boost uptake of new medicines by the National Health Service and improve the attractiveness of the UK to the global pharmaceuticals industry.
Regional differences in the lists of medicines approved for use by the NHS will be over-ridden by new centralised “technology appraisals” of the best treatments as judged by Nice, the government’s medicines advisory board.

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The move is part of an ambitious package of life-science reforms to be unveiled on Monday by David Cameron, the prime minister, designed to integrate medical research more closely with the NHS and biotechnology and pharmaceuticals companies, which have been cutting investments in the country in recent years.
It will include £180m in fresh government funding for corporate and academic development of new medicines, earlier experimental use of drugs within the health service, and measures to boost the number of NHS patients taking part in medical research.
In a speech on Monday, the prime minister is expected to say: “The most crucial, fundamental thing we’re doing is opening up the NHS to new ideas … The end-game is for the NHS to be working hand-in-glove with industry as the fastest adopter of new ideas in the world, acting as a huge magnet to pull new innovations through, right along the food-chain – from the labs to the boardrooms to the hospital bed.”
Larger pharmaceutical companies operating in the UK have long complained that Nice, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, often recommends against NHS use of new drugs as ineffective or too costly; and that even those treatments it approves are then not widely prescribed.
Under the new proposals, there will be a “Nice compliance regime” designed to ensure that the treatments it recommends are adopted locally – theoretically saving the NHS money and providing greater incentives for drug companies to invest in UK research.
This would overhaul the current system of local “formularies”, which have led to regional differences in the list of innovative medicines used by the NHS.
However, it is unclear how the measures will fit with plans announced this year to weaken Nice’s advisory role and introduce a new system of pricing and more delegated local commissioning of medicines.
Separately, Mr Cameron will call on the NHS to work with medicines regulators to launch an “early access” programme, so more patients will get early access to experimental drugs still under development for life-threatening diseases such as brain and lung cancer.
He will propose a change to the NHS Constitution so that patient data would automatically be included in databases available to medical researchers unless they explicitly opt out.
Following concerns over the weekend about the threat to confidentiality, Downing Street said: “All necessary safeguards would be in place to ensure protection of patients details - the data will be anonymised and the process will be carefully and robustly regulated.”
Mr Cameron has taken a growing interest in the need to improve the attractiveness of the UK for the life science sector, triggered by the widespread concern caused by the closure by Pfizer, the US pharmaceutical group, of its Sandwich research facility at the start of this year.
The company announced plans to cease operations by 2012 and sell the site in Kent, threatening 2,400 jobs directly and undermining the regional economy. It has since agreed to retain 650 posts and negotiated a deal with Mylan, a US generics company, to tap staff and operate on the site. The government has also granted the region the status of an enterprise zone.

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