Improving value for money in hepatitis C

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The new drugs for hepatitis C have the potential to take a large share of the NHS budget. These new drugs can cure more patients than the standard interferon-based treatments, but are much more costly at £25,000-£70,000 per treatment course.

We compared the costs and health benefits of the new drugs and the standard treatment in patients with advanced hepatitis C.

We concluded that, for most types of hepatitis C, the new drugs should be reserved as second-line for those who are not cured with peginterferon and ribavirin.

The price of the new drugs, however, makes a difference to the results. We have developed a price tool, available to download here Price tool (MS Excel , 477kb), to calculate the cost-effective treatment for a set of user-defined prices.

More details here Improving value for money from drug treatment of Hepatitis C (PDF , 263kb)

Other Policy & Research Briefing papers can be found here