New Medicines Reviews 2013

1 Introduction

On 13 February 2012, Scottish Government published SGHD/CMO(2012)1 Guidance to Further Strengthen the Safe and Effective use of New Medicines Across the NHS in Scotland^[1], which detailed further measures to strengthen previous guidance issued under CEL 17 (2010)^[2]and SGHD/CMO(2011)3^[3].

One of the key purposes of CMO(2012)1 was to "standardise a timeframe for NHS boards to consider Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) accepted medicines and to publish advice accordingly" ^[1].

In August 2012, the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer at Scottish Government asked Healthcare Improvement Scotland to undertake a data collection exercise. This first data collection exercise was undertaken to understand the extent to which SMC advice (for medicines approved during 2011) had been implemented in the 14 territorial NHS boards. This data collection exercise was on SMC advice issued prior to the requirements of CMO(2012)1, therefore, aggregation of data across NHSScotland to describe the nature of ADTC decisions was not possible due to variation in the terminology used.

As part of the New Medicines Review commissioned by the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, Healthcare Improvement Scotland was asked to repeat the data collection exercise, specifically auditing NHS board compliance with CMO (2012)1.