The move provides more evidence of the dramatic measures big pharma is taking to reinvent itself in a more challenging operating environment

Witty told the Wall Street Journal that healthcare officials from the UK, Spain, France and Italy had already visited the company's UK headquarters for an R&D presentation. It's likely no accident that the first healthcare officials to visit the company are from European countries where there are ongoing efforts to look at ways to reduce fast-growing healthcare costs.

"I'm going to deal with the pharmaceutical realities of the next 10 years, and they're very different from those of the 1990s," Witty told the WSJ. At the moment the pharmaceutical industry is being squeezed by soaring R&D costs, cost-containment efforts by governments around the world and increased regulatory complexity.

The hope for GSK is that their feedback should help to prioritise projects that will be best-received by regulatory agencies and increasingly the so-called 'fourth hurdle' erected by national organisations, such as the UK National Institute of Clinical Excellence, that companies must leap before bring new medicine to patients.

These organisations review the cost-effectiveness of new medicines and lay down prescribing guidelines for national healthcare services.

Other approaches

GSK's approach is a pragmatic one and ties in with efforts at other drugmakers.

For example, in another innovative approach Novartis forged a collaboration with NICE in which the agency offered consultation on the design of a Phase III trial of one of its pipeline drugs. As a result the company changed the design of the study in the hope of reducing the chance of its eventual take-up being stymied by clinical and cost-effectiveness concerns.

Healthcare consultancy and prescription data firm IMS reported recently that a number of other companies have been in similar discussions with NICE, although it points out that an interesting situation could arise if - despite consulting on the design of a study - NICE still elects to restrict access to a product.

Meanwhile, another has been adopted approach in the UK by Johnson & Johnson, which has responded to a refusal by the National Health Service to reimburse its Velcade (bortezomib) drug for cancer with a novel risk-sharing solution. The company will not charge for the treatment at all, unless a test indicates that it has been effective - not an insignificant risk given that treatment up to the point of testing costs around $24,000.

Meanwhile, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations (EFPIA) recently completed a 'toolkit' for companies aimed at trying to anticipate the requirements of bodies such as NICE - sometimes referred to as health technology institutes - and to promote best practice in the field.

This health technology assessment (HTA) document is specifically designed to make it easier for companies to deal with the differing requirements for the various bodies across Europe, and to avoid duplicative effort in meeting their requirements.