Following the MOU signed in May between Taiwan's Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) and the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the first workshop was held yesterday (13 Sep), focusing on gene therapy and cellular therapy. One of the consensus reached by the two sides was to plan for the acceleration of launching new drugs through information sharing of evaluation outcomes.
Director-General Chung-Liang Shih of the NHIA, said earlier that NHIA would refer to NICE's programme and set up a new fund for novel drugs with a scale of NT$10 billion to NT$12 billion, targeting new drugs and cancer drugs that have not yet completed Phase III clinical trials, and making temporary payments by the method of healthcare insurance coverage, and then evaluating whether to incorporate them into the healthcare insurance scheme or put them on the market after two years.
The fund is a stand-alone one and comes from public funding sources and the input of pharmaceutical companies, and manufacturers can decide on their own whether or not to join the fund. For example, if a drug has only undergone phase II clinical trials and its efficacy is still uncertain, it can be added to the fund first.
The Center for Drug Evaluation Taiwan (CDE) and NICE signed a medical technology evaluation cooperation agreement in May. CDE organised the 1st Taiwan-UK medical technology cooperation workshop on 13 September, inviting academics from NICE to come to Taiwan to focus on emerging technologies such as gene therapy and cellular therapy, and their real-world data collection mechanisms and clinical efficacy evaluation methods.
CDE said that based on the agreement signed in May, the two sides have maintained adequate exchanges and allowed talents to get a full picture as soon as possible, so it is expected that next year, people will be sent to the UK to learn from its experts, and one of the consensus reached by the two sides includes confirming that the evaluation standards are as consistent as possible, and that they will share the information on drug evaluation.
