Opinion Piece, paid for and written by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals

Unlocking the potential of better population health in post-Brexit Britain

Progressive partnership between the government, arm’s-length bodies and industry is key to creating an NHS that prioritises preventative over reactive healthcare.

We are currently living through a crisis of innovation. Whilst the NHS fights to recover from the COVID backlog with an ever-increasing volume of patients in poor health, it is also struggling to manage healthcare capacity and new technologies in a way that could lead to better outcomes and prevent the need for expensive ongoing treatment.

The government has tried to maintain NHS financial sustainability with a range of policies, including the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access, which sets pricing and reimbursement policy every five years.

There is an urgent and significant risk that if the government doesn’t get the balance right between cost-containment and the realisation of innovation, global companies may very well lose their appetite for future investment in the UK (indeed there have already been a number of examples of this across the sector in the last 12 months).

But focusing on short-term cost savings risks losing sight of the bigger picture. The UK currently finds itself at a proverbial ‘policy crossroads’ as it seeks to reform NHS, regulatory and reimbursement policies to make Britain the best place to launch new medicines. Recent policy developments have already begun to set the tone for the future of the medicines access landscape.

Notably, the MHRA’s announcement that it will be working to ‘mutually recognise’ decisions made by trusted international regulators is a welcome development.

If these processes are applied to a breadth of emerging therapies – not just in ‘unicorn’ scenarios – the UK will find itself competing more favourably for global life sciences investment.

This will require NICE processes to be further streamlined to narrow the gap between licensing and reimbursement. This is an area of great uncertainty, but I look forward to seeing how the team at NICE will rise to the challenge to make appraisal systems align with the government’s regulatory vision.

Other policies such as the ‘Life Sci for Growth’ package and forthcoming Major Conditions Strategy also stand to increase the attractiveness of the UK to global pharmaceutical boardrooms – but only if implemented with ambition.

We are living through a wave of therapeutic innovation. Emerging gene silencing and gene editing technologies stand to change the way we approach care, offering significant breakthroughs in high impact diseases such as cancer and dementia. These technologies have the potential to become part of the solution to address significant unmet needs and key priorities for the UK health system.

As a leader within a biotech company, I firmly believe that policy and implementation must keep pace with the ever-increasing rate of innovation if patients are to benefit at the earliest possible opportunity. Now is the time to be bold and solution-focused with policymakers.

If the UK can do this, it will undoubtedly cement its position at the global forefront of life sciences and patient care.

References available on request

Date of Preparation: June 2023. Job number: Corp-UK-00012

Philip Davey is Country Manager, UK & Ireland at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. alnylam.com