July 2022

Following a workshop with stakeholders from the NHS, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), industry and academia, we examine the challenges and opportunities in assessing the value and affordability of new Alzheimer’s medicines.

New Alzheimer’s treatments that are currently being developed present challenges and opportunities in terms of their value recognition. This is partly due to uncertainty in the long-term outcomes of the treatments, and partly due to factors specific to Alzheimer’s disease.

In July 2022, Alzheimer’s Research UK brought together stakeholders from the NHS, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), industry and academia to discuss these challenges and opportunities.

Our report from this workshop presents the main insights emerging from the discussions. Stakeholders at this workshop agreed on three key themes where Alzheimer’s Research UK could support patient access to innovative treatments:

  • Identifying and addressing policy barriers to medicines access.
  • Recognising value of a medicine.
  • Exploring payment models to ensure affordability for health systems and equitable medicines access to individuals.

Addressing value and affordability

Download the report
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We have produced recommendations that could begin to address the challenges discussed:

  • The Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) should act now to bring together stakeholders to seek solutions to challenges a new treatment will face around diagnosis, delivery, and monitoring.
  • The UK’s health technology assessment (HTA) bodies (NICE, the Scottish Medicines Consortium and the All-Wales Medicines Strategy Group) should consider the wider impacts of Alzheimer’s disease when assessing cost effectiveness.
  • NICE should adopt a lower rate of future discounting.
  • Research is needed to understand the inequalities in health outcomes for people of different backgrounds faced by people living with Alzheimer’s disease and what this means for enabling access to future innovative treatments.
  • Stakeholders should work collaboratively to reach a consensus on what the important outcomes are in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, placing people affected by the diseases that cause dementia at the heart of this work.
  • Stakeholders across the UK healthcare system should work collaboratively to develop pilots for the use of new payment models for complex therapies.