Accelerated Access Review - Talk or Action?

At DrDoctor we try to do the hard work for you. Whether that's making your hospital experience better or reading through long papers to extract the important info to deliver to you!

If you haven't already guessed, this blog post will be the latter. We've delved into the AAR, picked out what will be applicable to you and thrown in our opinion too. Read through our piece and let us know your thoughts.

What does the Accelerated Access Review mean to you? 

The report makes a couple of very important observations:

1. We need to strengthen and develop our life sciences industry. Particularly in light of Brexit, we’re going to need it

2. To do that, we need to shorten the cycle to deliver innovation at scale, and make sure it is transparent, cost effective and well measured

3. The NHS is uniquely placed to do this as a single payer systems, with ingrained research capacity, and high levels of integration (believe it or not!)

4. To do this, we must identify and involve innovative practitioners, involve patients (brilliantly, patients get 165 mentions in the report) and national bodies need to be aligned around innovation.

The review states:

Accessing innovation in the NHS has become increasingly challenging. This creates frustration for clinicians and patients who often have to wait for life-saving treatments, and for innovators who must navigate multiple processes before their products can be used.

The review recommends:

· The Accelerated Access Partnership should be created immediately to deliver on the reports findings

· The AAP and clinicians should lead on implementing the changes suggested

So, what does that mean for you?

The review could help create opportunities as Brexit approaches. “Across the NHS we’re going to create headroom for faster and wider uptake of important new patient treatments. In doing so we’re going to create new opportunities in the run-up to Brexit for our globally successful UK life sciences sector. If we get this right there are huge gains within our grasp, for patients across the NHS and for the wider success of our country- NHS England chief executive, Simon Stevens

If you are a hospital

You should be supported by your commissioners to make decisions around innovative products more quickly. There will be more ‘certified’ tools and products out there. Potentially there might be new payment mechanisms to help with business cases. This will all take a while though and you’ll also probably have to start publishing your innovation scorecards fairly soon.

If you are a clinician

Interventions should come to market sooner. If you are trying to innovate, the system will support you more. There will be more recognition for innovators, and the system should be more flexible.

If you really want to get involved, you can put yourself forward to lead on this work.

If you are a patient

There will be more opportunities to get involved earlier. The risk/reward equation is slightly more in your hands and there will be more chances to use innovative interventions, earlier in the process.

However, it’s not at all clear, yet, how you get involved. We have heard this sort of rhetoric before, and it is very hard to make happen on the ground. There will probably be an element of luck in whether you actually get early access.

If you are a supplier 

The cost of accessing the market will go down, thanks to shorter timecycles. The system should start being clearer about what it wants and needs. Support and funding is available - partially if you are an SME.

5-10 innovations a year will be earmarked as ‘Transformative’. So, if you can clearly evidence:

· Impact on unmet need

· Alignment with NHS England’s clinical priorities and other national priorities

· Impact on system efficiency

· Potential cost impact, from cost saving to significantly cost increasing

· Opportunity for clinical pathway transformation

· Innovative nature of the technology

Then you may just be chosen as one, and fast tracked across the NHS. For the chosen this will be spectacular. To get there, it means focus on deliverables and evidence over words and show.

If you are a regulator

Commercial decisions will be made before regulatory ones. You’ll be deeply involved in the review of more products, particularly digital ones. Could this be a bottleneck? You hold the keys to making this happen quickly.

In some ways Brexit may make these changes easier, but in the confusion the changes may also get lost. You will own the transaparency agenda – NICE will own the innovation scorecard, which may become key to much of this process.

If you are an AHSN

Your work is vital. You’re the engine room of the process. Those AHSNs that have built really strong working relationships with local trusts are in a great place to do this. Where those don’t exist, it’ll hurt as providers miss opportunities to use technology which has been centrally fast tracked.

You’ll play a role in finding new ideas, feeding them into the system and providing evidence and challenge throughout the process.

If you are from the centre

This needs to be viewed as something the system is doing together, not another initiative. For example App certification has been talked about for years, so giving the market and providers a clear structured message and delivering quickly will be key.

Enabling AHSNs and local innovators will be key, and providing small amounts of priming money at the right times will be enough to tip the balance from talk to success.

The report offers practical system changes that will result in real benefits to patients, clinicians, the NHS and the wider UK economy - Oxford Health Academic Science Network

Delivering on the report will be a challenge. It could become another talking shop; To avoid that, it needs everyone listed above to pull together, and focus on action and delivery.