Companies marketing oncology combination drugs are not submitting their products for appraisal by NICE, the HTA body for England and Wales, or are delaying their submissions, because of challenges in getting combination treatments through the system, says Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, chief executive of the charity Breast Cancer Now, who is calling for a reform of NICE’s technology appraisal methods.
The difficulty of appraising combination drugs was a “particular issue in breast cancer,” Morgan said, although she noted that it was a problem in other cancers and other disease areas too