The United Kingdom is a step closer to implementing a first-of-its-kind, subscription-style model of paying for antibiotics.

The step comes in the form of draft guidance for how England's National Health Service (NHS) should estimate the full value of the two new antibiotics—cefiderocol and ceftazidime-avibactam—that have been selected to be part of the pilot project. The guidance will inform the discussions over how much the NHS should pay the drug manufacturers on a yearly basis under a subscription plan that aims to delink the value of the antibiotics from the number of units sold.

The guidance was developed by the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which evaluated the benefit of the drugs to the health of the English population in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs)—a measurement used to assess the economic value of a medical intervention.

"This draft guidance represents an important milestone in the UK project," Nick Crabb, of NICE's Science, Evidence and Analytics Directorate, said in a press release. "Its ultimate goal is to ensure NHS has access to effective new antimicrobials to call on when needed and patients aren't left without treatment options in the face of growing antimicrobial resistance."

Assessing the public health value of antibiotics

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