The UK has moved the UK–US pharmaceutical arrangement into a further implementation phase, with pilots testing new approaches to medicines pricing, access and adoption from as early as September 2026. A joint taskforce of government, pharmaceutical industry and National Health Service representatives developed the package over 10 weeks.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said one pilot will examine how innovative medicines that have already met safety, quality and clinical standards can reach eligible patients more quickly, including treatments for rare conditions.
A separate pilot will test how productivity benefits can be incorporated into the assessment of medicine value, including the value of enabling patients to return to work. This goes beyond the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) reference-case approach, which assesses costs from the National Health Service (NHS) and personal social services perspective and excludes productivity costs from the main analysis.
The taskforce will also test a mechanism allowing pharmaceutical companies to co-invest in screening, testing and other parts of the patient pathway. The aim is to support faster uptake once NICE recommends a medicine. Dedicated regional funding will provide a further route for addressing local barriers to adoption of priority treatments.
The pilots form part of the wider UK–US pharmaceutical arrangement published in April. That agreement commits the UK to increase spending on new medicines from 0.3% of gross domestic product in 2026 to 0.6% by 2036.
The package therefore extends the current access agenda beyond the April increase in NICE’s cost-effectiveness threshold. It tests both a broader conception of medicine value and new ways of financing the infrastructure and local implementation needed to translate national recommendations into routine use.
Source: Department of Health and Social Care
Link: NHS patients get faster access to medicines under new pilots
Date: 2 July 2026
