Medicine costs

Your article, “Better cancer drugs will cost NHS dear, warns professor” (24 September), suggests new oncology medicines will be unaffordable to the NHS in Scotland in the coming years.

Looking ahead at the new and innovative medicines being developed to target specific tumour types, Professor David Cameron is quoted as saying he imagines the medicines bill will go on rising if all the new medicines in the pipeline come through.

In fact, NHS Scotland is facing a quite different scenario. In the coming years, many of the common medicines that are most prescribed for patients here are going off-patent, allowing generic manufacturers to provide them at a lower price. We believe hundreds of millions of pounds will be freed up in the NHS Scotland medicines bill as a result.

All new medicines are closely scrutinised by the Scottish Medicines Consortium to prove their clinical and cost effectiveness before they are accepted for use in the NHS in Scotland.

Those running our NHS are wrestling with the competing challenges of investment in new innovation and disinvestment in treatments that are no longer as effective. The medicines industry has to play its part in delivering an affordable healthcare system and hopes that in our dialogue with the NHS and government the opportunity created by the falling medicines bill will offer some of the solutions.

Sandra Auld

Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Scotland

Crichton’s Close

Edinburgh