Straight talk with... Mark Sculpher. Interview by Kate Ravilious.

Abstract

By 2014, the UK will be changing the way it regulates the price it pays for medicines. Currently the country's National Health Service (NHS) uses the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS), which controls the maximum profit a drug manufacturer can make on the basis of capital investments the manufacturer has made. A review of this system, carried out by the UK Office of Fair Trading in 2007, recommended that, instead, medicines should be priced according to the therapeutic benefits they offer to patients-an idea known as value-based pricing (VBP) that has similarities to systems already used in smaller countries such as Australia and Canada. This pricing scheme has been embraced by the UK government, and negotiations on how the system will work are due to begin this month. A British switch to VBP could have ripple effects throughout the global pharmaceutical industry. Even though the UK's share of the world drug market is relatively small-just 3%-drug prices in the country are important because a quarter of national governments reference British values to determine their own sticker prices. One of the most influential thinkers on the UK's proposed system is health economist Mark Sculpher, director of the Programme on Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment at the University of York. As a regular advisor to the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and former chair of a task force on methods guidance for economic evaluation at the agency, Sculpher has had an instrumental role in guiding value-based decision-making in the country's healthcare system. Kate Ravilious met with Sculpher at his office in York to discuss the value of VBP.