Each year, NHS England makes decisions on which new specialised treatments should be routinely commissioned. The decisions are based on advice from the Clinical Priorities Advisory Group (CPAG), which is made up of doctors, health experts, and patient representatives, and taken by the NHS England Board.

Treatments are grouped into five levels of priority, with those that have the highest relative clinical benefit for patients and the lowest relative cost classified as level one, and treatments with the lowest relative clinical benefit and highest relative cost classified as level five.

The outcome of the latest prioritisation round is set out below:

October 2022 prioritisation decisions

Each year NHS England makes decisions on which new specialised treatments should be routinely commissioned. The decisions are based on advice from the Clinical Priorities Advisory Group (CPAG), which is made up of doctors, health experts, and patient representatives, and taken by the NHS England Board. In the most recent prioritisation round seven of the nine treatments considered were affordable within the fixed budget and will, therefore, be commissioned for routine use.

These treatments are:

• MR-guided laser interstitial thermal therapy for treatment of epileptogenic zones in children and adults with refractory focal epilepsy
• Fresh osteochondral allograft for osteochondral lesions of the knee in adults and post-pubescent children
• Treatment of iron overload for transfused and non-transfused patients with chronic inherited anaemias
• Fostemsavir for multi-drug resistant HIV-1 infection (adults)
• Dabrafenib and trametinib in the treatment of patients with BRAF-mutated anaplastic thyroid cancer
• Nebulised liposomal amikacin for the treatment of non-tuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease caused by mycobacterium avium complex refractory to current treatment options (adults and post pubescent children)
• Rituximab for idiopathic membranous nephropathy.

There was not, however, sufficient remaining resource to fund the following two policies:

• Alglucosidase alfa for patients with infantile-onset Pompe disease (all ages)
• Canakinumab for patients with Still’s disease refractory to anakinra and tocilizumab.

The unfunded policies will have an opportunity to be considered again for a future prioritisation round.

NHS England is committed to helping patients with rare diseases by funding as many treatments as it can from the available budget at the time. For more information on our prioritisation process, please watch our video: Making decisions about which new treatments to fund.