Your insights could make a real difference to patients in Wales. We want to hear from individuals or small groups of patients and carers, and large patient organisations.
Most newly licensed medicines undergo health technology assessment (HTA) by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). NICE will then publish guidance on whether the medicine is recommended for use; this guidance applies in England and Wales. This means that patients treated by NHS Wales as well as those treated by NHS England will be able to access a medicine if its use is recommended by NICE.
The All Wales Medicines Strategy Group (AWMSG) also assess medicines for use in NHS Wales. These are usually medicines that have not been assessed by NICE (or have not been selected for a future NICE assessment) but where a clear clinical need or other benefit to NHS Wales has been identified. The All Wales Therapeutics and Toxicology Centre (AWTTC) identifies licensed and off-label medicines that are likely to need assessment by AWMSG. Sometimes a pharmaceutical company will make a submission for AWMSG assessment for one of their medicines or healthcare professionals working in NHS Wales may request that a medicine is considered for assessment if they feel there is a need for it to be made routinely available to patients in Wales.
Patient groups and organisations are also invited to suggest medicines for consideration for AWMSG assessment. Please email us at awttc@wales.nhs.uk so we can tell you how to do this. Also, take a look at the requests we've already received and that will be going to the AWMSG Scrutiny Panel for a decision on whether an assessment should progress. The views of patients, patient organisations and the public will also be considered as part of their decision-making process and so if you'd like to share yours, please email us at awttc@wales.nhs.uk.
Insight into the real effects of a health condition or medicine on patients, and their families and carers, adds a vital human dimension to AWMSG's assessments of medicines as they want to hear patients' voices as well as healthcare professionals' views.
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Patients' insights are invaluable to us when AWMSG is deciding whether to recommend a medicine to be used in NHS Wales. As part of the medicine assessment process, we will search the internet to find patient organisations and then ask any relevant ones to fill in our questionnaire. We also welcome individual patient's views. We've listed the medicines we're currently assessing on our work in progress page and encourage patients, their families and carers, and patient organisations to fill in a questionnaire.
Your responses will be included in the meeting papers for our committee members. At the meeting, all patient views will be summarised and presented by the group's lay member. We don't place any of the questionnaires we receive in the public domain. They will only be sent to members of our assessment groups and questionnaires from individual patients and carers will be made anonymous. Patient organisations may also be anonymous by ticking a box on the questionnaire. Representatives from patient organisations are also invited to attend these meetings to share the views of their members in person.