The National Health Service of England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence have unveiled a proposal that could provide a new pathway for innovative drugs to be assessed and made available to patients.

The plan is to overhaul England’s $520 million Cancer Drug Fund into a ‘managed access’ fund for new cancer drugs, with clear entry and exit criteria.

The fund — established in 2011 to help patients in England obtain access to drugs not available from NHS — would allow access to drugs that appear promising but lack a NICE recommendation due to insufficient evidence. NICE would grant the drugs a conditional recommendation, and the CDF would enable their use for a predetermined period while evidence is collected.

After the evidence is gathered, a drug could receive a NICE positive recommendation, at which point it would move from the CDF to routine commissioning. Conversely, it also could receive a negative recommendation and then only made available on the basis of individual patient funding requests. 

The comment period closes Feb. 11, 2016. The target to complete the full transition to the new fund is set for the end of March 2017. View the proposal here: www.fdanews.com/11-19-Cancer-Fund.pdf.