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New thinking is needed to fund medicines, the RPS says in a report, ‘New Medicines, Better Medicines, Better Use of Medicines’. The market is not set up to incentivise the production of new types of medicines that aim to eradicate rather than just manage symptoms, believes Professor Jayne Lawrence, RPS chief scientist.

“The current crisis in antimicrobial resistance is in part due to the lack of new classes of antibiotics coming onto the market. Antibiotics can cure infections in weeks, so the volume of sales of drugs is low. This doesn’t allow the tens or even hundreds of millions required for research and development to be recouped.” We need the NHS to be able to cope with funding treatments that have a high initial cost but may not require a lifetime of use by patients, she adds.