United Kingdom

In its latest draft standard contract for 2025/26, the National Health Service in England has proposed enhanced prescribing requirements “in recognition of the increasing importance of biosimilars in the provision of biological medicines.”

Medtechs watch with interest as NICE, a long-standing component of market access for innovative technologies in the National Health Service, vows to get to grips with technology programs that often miss the target for developers of groundbreaking solutions.

Vardenafil led the steepest generic price rises in the UK in January, with the average cost of one presentation of the erectile dysfunction treatment more than trebling.

HAS, the French health technology assessment body, has issued positive recommendations for several orphan drugs, including for Vyloy, which was provisionally rejected for reimbursement in the UK last year.

The MHRA’s post-market surveillance regulations for Great Britain will be followed in 2026 by a pre-market regulation, but its progress will not be steered by the agency’s erstwhile leader of device system transformation. The ABHI’s Steve Lee and Phil Brown ponder where national device system regulation – and the MHRA – go next.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said it was “fake news” to describe the UK as the worst place in the western world for pharma companies to invest and blamed the decision to pull plans for a new £450m vaccines facility near Liverpool on it simply not being economically viable without more government support.

A lack of big pharma licensing deals and IPOs created problems, but newer UK biotech companies moved ahead in 2024 thanks to increased venture capital funding, finds a new report from the BIA.

Flagship Pioneering has unveiled a new collaboration with Cambridge UK, to find synergies with academics and hospitals in the scientific hotspot, and create new biotech start-ups. Scrip spoke to Flagship about its plans.

LFH Regulatory managing director and founder Laura Friedl-Hirst tells Medtech Insight what was piquing the interest of medtech companies visiting her company’s stand at Medica 2024.

Opella says FDA “lifted a clinical hold on its planned actual use trial to support the switch of Cialis” while Petros Pharmaceuticals shifts from working on its own ED-switch proposals to developing a proprietary technology-assisted platform designed for use in consumers’ self-selection of drugs made available in ACNU proposals.