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Generic and Biosimilar Medications

Patients

Making medicines more affordable to the NHS and thereby increasing patient access to important and potentially life-saving drugs is a key role of the UK generic and biosimilar medicines industry.

Generic and Biosimilar Medications

Savings

The NHS faces major funding challenges due to increased demand from an ageing population, as well as the rising cost of new technologies and drugs.

 

Generic and biosimilar competition already saves the NHS more than £20 billion a year and allows further investment in new drugs which can support unmet patient need.

 

These savings are generated by the UK's competitive market, which sees multiple manufacturers compete to supply, significantly reducing the prices paid by the NHS.

 

This allows more money to be invested back into the healthcare system. It also allows more patients to be treated and, crucially, can often mean they are able to access a medicine earlier in their treatment pathway, resulting in better overall outcomes.

 

 

Access

Providing savings via off-patent competition is one measure of success, but increasing patient access is also crucial. A good example of this in practice is dapagliflozin (marketed by AstraZeneca as Forxiga), which was the most costly NHS primary care drug in 2024/25, costing £333 million, an increase of nearly £100 million from 2023/24.

 

When companies overturned the patent in the courts, a generic market was formed. Now that generic alternatives can significantly lower costs and increase supply, NICE has consulted on widening their use as a first-line treatment for chronic heart failure and diabetes. This is because under patent protection, the dapagliflozin list price was £38 per pack. However, applying a typical generic selling price reduction of 90% for a large-volume molecule means that it will be significantly more affordable for the NHS.

 

With generic competition, dapagliflozin's use will significantly grow, and from September 2026, prescriptions are likely to rise in number by 230% to treat 2.4 million people. This is a strong example of how replacing end-of-patent medicines with generic ones can increase patient access significantly while still saving the NHS money.

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