New cancer drug rules may have little impact

LONDON (Reuters) - New rules designed to give terminally ill Britons better access to expensive cancer drugs may have little impact in practice, a leading health expert said Tuesday.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) -- the country's healthcare cost-effectiveness watchdog -- said this month it was ready to approve drugs that would normally be considered too costly for use on the state health service for patients with less than two years to live.

But James Raftery, professor of health technology assessment at Southampton University, said important caveats meant few of the expensive drugs previously rejected by NICE would qualify.

Between 1999 and 2008, NICE rejected 11 drugs on the grounds that their cost per quality adjusted life year, or QALY, was well above its threshold of 30,000 pounds ($45,000).

A QALY is a combined measure of quantity and quality of life, with one QALY equal to one year of perfect health or two years of half-perfect health.

Raftery examined the effect the new rules would have had on all cancer drugs that NICE had rejected in the past because of cost effectiveness. He found few of them would qualify under the new criteria, with most failing to meet the stipulation that no alternative treatment with comparable benefits existed.

His analysis was published in the online edition of the British Medical Journal here

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Sharon Lindores)