The Department has conducted no such research. Current arrangements already allow off-patent drugs to be prescribed for new purposes where this is the most appropriate clinical treatment course for a patient. Prescribing decisions are a matter for the clinical judgement of the prescriber concerned.<\/p>
"}
, "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4020", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for George Freeman"}
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, "date" : {"_value" : "2015-11-23", "_datatype" : "dateTime"}
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, "legislature" : [{"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/terms/25259", "prefLabel" : {"_value" : "House of Commons"}
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], "questionText" : "To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department has conducted on the disincentives to prescribing off-patent repurposed drugs.", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"}
, "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4443", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Carol Monaghan"}
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, {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/resources/431700", "AnsweringBody" : [{"_value" : "Department of Health"}
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The current legal framework allows a clinician to prescribe drugs outside their licensed indication where that will best meet the clinical needs of their patient. This clinical freedom is crucial in delivering appropriate healthcare to groups of patients for whom medicines have not historically been licensed, e.g. children. It is also helpful in enabling prescribers to quickly pick up and apply new evidence that will help patients with particular clinical needs. The Off-Patent Drugs Bill would introduce a legal duty to apply for a licence for off-patent drugs where evidence of effectiveness for a new indication becomes available. This will create an expectation that only licensed uses of drugs are acceptable and therefore that off-label use is not appropriate. This would cause unnecessary delays in patients getting the medicines they need by slowing the rapid uptake of new evidence in clinical practice. This is why we believe the proposed legislation could potentially be harmful.<\/p>
"}
, "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4020", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for George Freeman"}
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, "date" : {"_value" : "2015-11-23", "_datatype" : "dateTime"}
, "hansardHeading" : {"_value" : "Off-patent Drugs Bill"}
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], "questionText" : "To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the contribution of 6 November 2015 by the Minister for Community and Social Care, Official Report, column 1307, what the evidential basis is for his statement that the provisions of the Off-patent Drugs Bill would be potentially harmful.", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"}
, "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4443", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Carol Monaghan"}
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, {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/resources/428555", "AnsweringBody" : [{"_value" : "Department of Health"}
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Clinicians can already prescribe off-patent drugs off-label on clinical grounds if they judge this is the right thing to do to meet the individual clinical needs of their patients.<\/p>
The Government is keen to accelerate the adoption of innovative medicines and increase the innovative use of existing medicines where the evidence reports clinical benefits and cost effectiveness to patients. To that end, we are seeking a number of initiatives to provide innovation but whilst supporting the aims of the Private Member\u2019s Bill on this subject, we do not believe the proposed mechanism is either practicable and desirable.<\/p>
We are working with NHS England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the General Medical Council and the Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency to ensure that there is better information available to support clinicians who wish to prescribe off-patent drugs for off-label indications, and to ensure that new evidence is picked up more quickly and reliably and translated into clinical practice and can be fed through into licensing applications.<\/p>
A huge amount of work is also going on in the Accelerated Access Review which will support the \u201cpull\u201d of innovation through to clinical practice.<\/p>
As part of the debate on the Access to Medical Treatments Bill, we are working with officials in the Department, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and the Health and Social Care Information Centre to see how the power in the Bill, if it were to pass, could address the lack of provision of information on new uses for existing medicines via the power to create a database of innovations in order to support evidence-based prescribing.<\/p>"} , "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4020", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for George Freeman"} } , "answeringMemberConstituency" : {"_value" : "Mid Norfolk"} , "answeringMemberPrinted" : {"_value" : "George Freeman"} , "dateOfAnswer" : {"_value" : "2015-11-17", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "groupedQuestionUIN" : {"_value" : "902127"} , "isMinisterialCorrection" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "questionFirstAnswered" : [{"_value" : "2015-11-17T17:20:22.137Z", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} ]} , "answeringDeptId" : {"_value" : "17"} , "answeringDeptShortName" : {"_value" : "Health"} , "answeringDeptSortName" : {"_value" : "Health"} , "date" : {"_value" : "2015-11-10", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "hansardHeading" : {"_value" : "Drugs: Licensing"} , "houseId" : {"_value" : "1"} , "legislature" : [{"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/terms/25259", "prefLabel" : {"_value" : "House of Commons"} } ], "questionText" : "To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to improve the availability of off-patent drugs for novel uses through non-legislative measures.", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4443", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Carol Monaghan"} } , "tablingMemberConstituency" : {"_value" : "Glasgow North West"} , "tablingMemberPrinted" : [{"_value" : "Carol Monaghan"} ], "uin" : "902130"} ], "itemsPerPage" : 10, "page" : 0, "startIndex" : 1, "totalResults" : 3, "type" : ["http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#ListEndpoint", "http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#Page"]} }