The latest Life Sciences Competitiveness Index (LSCI) was published by the Office of Life Sciences (OLS) in July 2022. The metric didn’t bring universal good news, but Leela Barham argues that we need to consider whether the metric measures what matters most. We need a better understanding of the health of the UK life sciences industry and, most importantly, what it means for patients.

Interest in metrics

There are many people interested in how well the life sciences industry is doing in the UK (and beyond), not only for patients who can benefit from today’s treatments, but also in society at large. Even if we are not yet, we may one day become patients or caregivers of patients at some point in the future.

This explains why there has been an interest over the years in compiling indicators for the UK industry.

Life science ecosystem

The 2022 LSCI not only noted the alarming trends they suggest (ABPI said the data should ring alarm bells across government), but this time along with a description of the life sciences ecosystem. It is also worth noting that it was published. It is an attempt to identify the key drivers of today’s success in the UK life sciences industry and is a timely reminder of the industry’s dual focus on patient outcomes and economic growth. .

It’s easy to spot holes, but why, for example, is industry alone perceived as a major player in the tax environment? It helps remind people that it is not a simple input/output equation to provide

This work is also being done to tie the metric more closely to each part of the ecosystem. This can be viewed as an attempt to be a little more organized.

The content of the indicator is…

No effort is made to provide indicator weightings, and stakeholders may focus on the indicators that matter most.

Access and Ingestion are particularly emphasized by ABPI, which states:[the UK is] It lags its global competitors in key areas such as diagnostic use, patient uptake of new drugs, clinical trial recruitment, and drug exports. The Ethical Medicines Industry Group (EMIG) also emphasizes access and uptake, saying: in England. The data on uptake are particularly dire, with the UK consistently well below the average level of uptake observed in control countries. ”

The 2022 LSCI includes access by analysis from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Associations (EFPIA) WAIT index, examining the availability of new medicines in England (and for the first time Scotland) and other countries. It also includes the average number of days from marketing authorization to drug availability.

Uptake is also included by looking at per capita uptake (days of treatment) of new drugs in the UK as a percentage of the average of the comparison countries.

Wellcome is also a new indicator of availability and utilization of diagnostic technology. This is a reminder of the broader context of ensuring patients receive the treatment they can most benefit from, not just giving the stamp of approval from regulatory authorities, but actually making the treatment available for use. highlights how the NHS needs to be ‘prepared’. good.

…and not

However, the 2022 LSCI does not include the speed and volume of NICE technology evaluations found in previous iterations. The user guide explains that these have been replaced to “allow international comparison of access to new medicines through standardized methodologies”. have a clear impact on whether they are able to routinely fund access to positively assessed treatments in a timely manner.

The NICE board has discussed the speed of NICE’s work and the difficulty of presenting numbers. This is partly because speed isn’t just dependent on her NICE. Businesses can slow things down, and COVID-19 has been a reminder of external shocks to systems that can affect day-to-day operations. Would capturing and presenting these complexities also be a reason to exclude them from LSCI? ) has changed the methodology behind it. What was circumvented is exactly how it has changed and where new KPIs can be found.

The 2022 LSCI also highlights that pharmaceutical spending is not currently included in the indicator, albeit as an appendix. To summarize the discussion, it is very difficult to compare UK spending to other countries in a meaningful way. But there are warm words about how spending monitoring can help understand cost-effectiveness, and that this “should be considered within the context of taking and accessing medicines.”

To be honest it is rather difficult to know what the UK spends in any given case, let alone how it compares to other countries. Better data have emerged for England, at least with the largest share of the market, but there are no leading figures for UK real spending.

Metric updates and soliciting feedback

As always, the same comes back in a new form. The 2000s indicators have been incorporated into the Pharmaceutical Industry Competitiveness Task Force (PICTF) Indicators. His LSCI in July 2022 is his eighth version. These are simplified versions with 29 indicators. It was 46 in the 2005 PICTF.

The PICTF once presented a marginal tax rate for the corporate tax, which is more relevant today as rebates from businesses are projected to be even higher than the corporate tax in 2023.

But the evolution from PICTF to LSCI and these latest iterations show how difficult it is to decide what to measure, let alone what can be meaningfully measured, and to look at the tree to see the tree. It shows the balance of things. There is no such thing as a perfect set of indicators, and efforts to improve the LSCI are welcome.

OLS says it welcomes user feedback, including future changes. Vote to bring back the speed of NICE ratings, including a breakdown of who is driving this. Corporate, NICE, or something else. Would you also like to supplement our new data on access and uptake in Scotland, and also add the speed of recommendations from the Scottish Medicines Consortiums (SMC)? You must select the option to share your opinion about

About the author

Leela Barham is a researcher and writer who has worked with all stakeholders across the UK and international healthcare systems on the economics of the pharmaceutical industry. She Leela served as an advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services on the 2019 Voluntary Scheme for Pricing and Access of Branded Medicines (VPAS).