ISSUE: The world faces a growing threat from antibiotic resistance. There is an urgent need for new antibiotics and for improved stewardship. Following international initiatives to boost R&D efforts, new antibiotics are beginning to come to market. HTA and payer bodies need to be able to assess the value that these new antibiotics offer so that prices and payment mechanisms can be agreed that provide appropriate access for patients and appropriate returns on investment for developers. Assessing the value of new antibiotics presents a number of challenges. The design of clinical trials and the emergence of accelerated regulatory pathways mean that new antibiotics are likely to come to market with evidence of effectiveness that does not fit the pattern that HTA and payer bodies typically expect. Furthermore, conventional HTA and payer approaches are not well suited to assessing the wider value of new antibiotics to the population and society in general (for example by helping to contain the further spread of resistant pathogens, and by enabling other medical procedures), and conventional approaches to paying for drugs are not well suited to rewarding compounds whose value may lie partly in their use being restricted to improve stewardship. OVERVIEW: This session will explore the challenges that new antibiotics present, and set out recent thinking on possible ways forward. Adrian Towse will present work from the Office of Health Economics on developing a value framework for antibiotics, building on a recent Discussion Forum in London with key stakeholders. Alec Morton will provide an update on the findings of the DRIVE-AB project funded by the European Commission and EFPIA, which aims to provide an approach for the assessment of the value of an antibiotic. Douglas Lundin will reflect on the challenges for payers, health systems and governments and the ways that these can be addressed.