An “innovative collaboration” will see hundreds of “dormant” drug licences revived to tackle shortages of “specific critical treatments”.
Medicines UK said last week that Project Revive - a collaboration between NHS England (NHSE), the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Medicines UK - will encourage drugmakers to “relaunch” MHRA-approved but “dormant” medicine licences “through a dedicated regulatory pathway and NHS purchasing arrangements”.
The programme has identified a “pilot list” of 378 drugs that “have either failed to attract sufficient supply through NHSE tenders” or which NHSE “believes are a supply resilience risk and represent a strategic priority”.
Read more: ‘Concerned’: health dept to fund UK’s £1bn pharma deal with US
The body said the list includes medicines of “critical priority” and aims to target those “representing the most serious risk to supply resilience which could lead to shortages affecting patient care”.
“Treatment areas for the initial list of medicines identified include complex cancers, thrombosis and pulmonary embolism and schizophrenia, to name but a few,” it added.
Coordinated approach
A “new joined-up pathway” will be created to “encourage manufacturers to revive dormant licences” for medicines on the list, Medicines UK said, and the treatments “will benefit from prioritised MHRA regulatory support, including early engagement meetings”.
“In parallel, NHSE will establish a dedicated buying framework outside standard procurement routes, offering clarity on volumes, prices and purchasing arrangements,” it added.
It said the purpose of this “coordinated approach” is to “incentivise” drugmakers to supply medicines “that may previously have been considered commercially unviable despite their clinical importance”.
Read more: Aspirin supplies to normalise ‘over coming weeks’, expects DH
The programme hopes to be “delivering results by this time next year”, the body said - and if it is successful in “reviving and broadening the number of licences” for a range of critical drugs, the ambition “is to see how this approach can be scaled up”.
“The pilot will run over 12 months and assess the success of resource-intensive targeted interventions. A decision about the long-term programme would be made in early 2027.”
“Fantastic opportunity”
NHSE’s interim chief commercial officer and director of medicines value and access Fiona Bride said Project Revive will “create a clear pathway for companies to bring important patient treatments back into the NHS supply chain”.
“Ensuring a resilient and stable supply of medicines is fundamental to delivering patient care,” she added. “This collaborative pilot initiative aims to strengthen that supply chain by incentivising more companies to become NHS suppliers, or deepen existing partnerships”.
Read more: Medicine shortages are ‘national security issue’, says House of Lords
Medicines UK chief executive Mark Samuels said the collaboration is a “fantastic opportunity to deliver real patient benefit through collaboration between the NHS and manufacturers”, and a “tangible example of a partnership approach that will help mitigate the impact” of critical drug shortages.
“We have long stated that medicine shortages cannot be solved in isolation, and this project shows what can be achieved by working together,” he added.
Read more: Serious shortage protocols for Creon and HRT patches extended
It comes after a report by the House of Lords warned that the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) does not prioritise drug supply issues “as the potential national security issue that they represent”.
The DH instead “focuses on reactive actions when shortages have already occurred”, it said, and “does not effectively communicate shortages, or solutions, to frontline staff such as pharmacists and GPs”.
