Scottish Medicines Consortium

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The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) has the role of providing advice to NHS Boards and their Area Drug and Therapeutics Committees (ADTCs) about all newly licensed medicines. [1] It seeks to supply advice within 12 weeks of a new medicine being licenced to ensure that patients would could benefit can get access to the medicine as quickly as possible. The speed of the process has allowed the SMC to be compared favourably against the performance of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) which performs a similar role for the NHS in England and Wales.[2] On one occasion, NICE was accused of incompetence by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) for delaying issuing advice for England and Wales about a drug that had already been approved for use in Scotland by the SMC. [3]

[edit] references

  1. ^ Scottish Medicines Consortium Home Page
  2. ^ Paper by Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
  3. ^ http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_pr080807.hcsp RNIB accuses NICE of incompetence]

[edit] See also