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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2015-11-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his strategy is for engaging with NHS leaders, clinical staff and managers in the implementation of the Accelerated Access Review.

George Freeman

The Accelerated Access Review (AAR), chaired by Sir Hugh Taylor, will make recommendations to government on reforms to accelerate access for National Health Service patients to innovative medicines and medical technologies making our country the best place in the world to design, develop and deploy these products. The terms of the reference for the review focus on faster access to innovations, which may include certain off-patent repurposed drugs, as opposed to the routine availability of medicines or medical technologies.

Prior to establishing the terms of reference for the AAR, the Department reviewed evaluation reports and met with officials from previous initiatives on the uptake of innovation in the NHS including the Innovation, Health and Wealth report. As a result, building upon the lessons of previous reviews is explicit with the terms of reference of the AAR.

The AAR has regular meetings with senior officials from NHS England via a steering group as recommendations are being developed. In addition, some staff from NHS England have been assigned to support the review team.

Sir Hugh is still in the process of developing final recommendations which will be published in spring 2016. In his Interim Report published in October, Sir Hugh sets out a proposition on “galvanising the NHS”. This involves supporting the NHS to adopt innovation, more rapidly through better practical support, stronger incentives and the potential streamlining of local structures.

The Department reviewed evaluation reports and met with officials from previous initiatives on the uptake of innovation in the NHS prior to establishing the terms of reference for the AAR. It was clear that whilst progress has been made on the uptake of innovation in the NHS there is still much to do. Sir Hugh and the head of the External Advisory Group, Professor Sir John Bell, set out the case for uptake of innovation in the recently published AAR Interim Report.

The AAR has senior level contact with officials working on Lord Carter’s review of NHS efficiency to ensure that information is shared between the two teams.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2015-11-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of academic health science networks on uptake of medical technology.

George Freeman

Speeding up the adoption of innovation into practice to improve clinical outcomes and patient experience has been one of the four core contractual objectives for Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) since their establishment in 2013.

AHSNs have taken a range of approaches in delivering their objectives which have been selected in response to the priorities of their local populations and health economies. AHSNs are supporting over 150 active programmes and projects across a range of clinical and cross-cutting themes, many of which support the spread and adoption of innovations in their localities. In addition, AHSNs also host the Small Business Research Initiative and are facilitating the creation of Test Beds – both of which involve supporting the development and spread of healthcare technologies.

As part of NHS England’s assurance process, AHSNs are expected to publish annual reports to update their stakeholders on their achievements against their business plans. Annual reports can be found on individual AHSN websites.

Case studies and exemplars of how AHSNs are supporting the speed up adoption of innovation into practice can be found in the resources section of the AHSNs Network website: www.ahsnnetwork.com

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2015-11-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the (a) forecast reduction in cases of and deaths from infection by Group C meningococcal disease as a result of the introduction of the meningitis C vaccine to the UK schedule in 1999, (b) number of meningitis C vaccinations administered in each year since that programme began and (c) cost of delivering that programme in each year since 1999.

Jane Ellison

Deaths have fallen from 110 in 1998/99 to an annual average of 3 deaths over the last 10 years. Annual MenC cases and deaths have therefore been respectively 97% and 96% lower in the last 10 years than in the year before vaccination was available.

Routine immunisation programmes with MenC containing vaccines have changed since 1999 and this has affected the ability to collect estimate annual numbers of doses administered for each vaccine offered but currently around 96% of infants receive MenC vaccine and 93% of one year olds receive their MenC-Hib booster in England by their second birthday. Coverage data are not routinely collected on the third dose in adolescence (currently MenACWY vaccine) which began in the 2013-2014 school year.

The administrative costs for the MenC programme are included in the global sum payment to general practitioners (managed by NHS England) which covers the costs of providing essential and additional primary care services.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2015-11-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the (a) forecast reduction in cases of and deaths from infection by influenza as a result of the nasal flu vaccine in 2015, (b) forecast number of nasal flu vaccines administered and (c) cost of delivering that programme in each of the next three years.

Jane Ellison

It is difficult to forecast the population impact that the nasal flu vaccine will have in the forthcoming season as vaccine effectiveness will vary according to the circulating influenza virus in any one season together with the vaccine uptake achieved. In general the effectiveness of live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) ranges from 50% upwards against illness caused by antigenically matched strains in children, but has also shown some protection against antigenically mismatched strains. The provisional uptake in two, three and four year olds in England up to week 46 2015 (ending 15 November 2015) was 23.0%, 24.0% and 19.4% respectively.

In 2016/17 the childhood flu programme will cover all 2-7 year olds and at risk children.

In 2017/18 the childhood flu programme will cover all 2-10 year olds and at risk children.

Table 1: The forecast number of nasal flu vaccines administered to children in each of the next three years.

Source: NHS England’s Spending Review submission for childhood flu.

Table 2: The forecast cost of delivering the childhood flu programme in each of the next three years.

Note: These are the full programme costs (including the cost of the vaccine).