Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that new treatments for (a) Alzheimer’s disease and (b) other dementias are made available to people in the UK.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) makes recommendations for the National Health Service in England on whether new medicines should be routinely funded, based on an assessment of their costs and benefits. The NICE evaluates all new medicines, including medicines for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and aims to publish guidance for the NHS as close as possible to licensing. The NHS in England is legally required to fund recommended treatments, normally within three months of the publication of final guidance.

The NICE and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency have piloted enhanced information sharing arrangements for the new disease modifying dementia treatments, which have enabled the organisations to fully align their processes and will enable faster decision making for future treatments that may come to market.

To prepare for the new generation of dementia treatments in development, NHS England is working to ensure the diagnostic and treatment capacity, clinical pathway redesign and investment are in place to support the adoption of any new licensed and NICE-recommended treatments as soon as possible.

Health is a devolved matter and decisions on the availability of medicines are a matter for the respective devolved administrations.