NHS negotiates £300m saving on most expensive drug

The NHS has negotiated the biggest saving for a single drug after securing deals with five manufacturers.

An anticipated saving of £300 million is set to be made after the NHS reached deals for ‘biosimilar’ versions of the organisation’s most expensive drug – adalimumab.

The NHS is now estimated to save a record £300 million from the biosimilars which are expected to be available in December.

Over 46,000 patients are currently prescribed the drug, under its brand name Humira, to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis.

After adalimumab’s patent expired, the NHS accepted bids from Amgen, Biogen, Mylan and Sandoz to develop biosimilar version of the drug, as well as AbbVie, the manufacturer of the original medicine.

NHS hospitals are expected to pay around a quarter of what they currently spend of adalimumab: over £400 million every year. The savings would pay for an extra 11,700 community nurses or 19,800 more breast cancer treatments for patients.

The deal also puts NHS England on course to deliver its plan of cutting £300 million from the nation’s annual medicines bill by 2021.

Simon Stevens, NHS England’s chief executive, said: “As part of the NHS’s Long Term Plan we are ensuring every penny of extra investment is wisely spent. Harnessing the power of competition between drug companies, NHS England has now freed up hundreds of millions of pounds of savings to reinvest in patient care. By working with patients and frontline clinicians we’ve now successfully negotiated the biggest ever set of savings on what was the NHS’s most costly drug.

Guidance has been issued to Trusts and CCGs stating that nine out of 10 new patients should be started on the best value biological medicine within three months of a biosimilar launch. Within 12 months, at least 80% of existing patients should be switched onto the best value biological medicine.

NHS England expects that patients switching to a biosimilar will have the same response to the original medicine. NHS regions will have the choice of medicines they can prescribe in case the first choice isn’t clinically relevant.