The government last week (July 3) revealed that it is working towards launching “a Single National Formulary (SNF) for medicines within the next two years”.
Announced as part of the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DH) new 10-year health plan, the SNF will address the current “needlessly complicated” system in place for “getting new medications to patients”.
Read more: IN FULL: Pharmacy to ‘transition’ from dispensing to clinical services by 2030
“The process by which each local area decides which drugs are available is bureaucratic and creates a postcode lottery,” the plan said.
“These local formularies do not make sense in a universal service that should provide a core standard of high-quality care to everyone,” it stressed.
Instead, the government will “create a new formulary oversight board responsible for sequencing products included in the [SNF] based on clinical and cost effectiveness” and supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), it added.
“Cost-effective innovations”
Local prescribers such as pharmacists “will be encouraged to use products ranked highly in the SNF but will retain clinical autonomy as long as they prescribe in line with NICE guidance”, the plan said.
And it added that the policy aims to ensure that the government can “drive rapid and equitable adoption of the most clinically and cost-effective innovations”.
“We will work with industry throughout the implementation of these policies to make sure we realise these objectives together,” it said.
Read more: NHS App AI tool to direct patients to pharmacies by 2028
The 10-year plan also revealed that community pharmacies will “transition” from a focus on dispensing to “offering more clinical services” over the next five years.
It said that over the “first half” of the decade, the government will “modernise” its “approach to the dispensing of medicines and make better use of technology” by introducing “dispensing robots” in pharmacies.
And it set out that an AI NHS App upgrade will direct patients to community pharmacy for care by 2028.
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The plan also announced that pharmacies will be given a “bigger role in prevention by expanding their role in vaccine delivery” – with pharmacies to deliver human papillomavirus (HPV) catch-up jabs from next year.
And it added that “innovative” weight loss services could be rolled out in pharmacies, including “digital only” models where “everything” is managed online, while pharmacy studies will “shape” a “new genomics population health service”.
Check the C+D site for the latest on this developing story
