NICE Launches New Flexible Assessment Methods
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has launched a new approach to how it assesses medicines and other health technologies. It aims to provide NHS patients with earlier access to innovative treatments.
The new methods build on the new five year strategy that NICE announced in 2021, and the theme continues to be greater flexibility to adapt to decisions.
NICE's Five - Year Strategy and Changes
In the five year strategy, NICE said it was going to maintain its robust, rigorous, and trusted approach to assessment, but would build in speed, agility, and flexibility to create a quicker, more responsive approach to evaluate all health technologies - including diagnostics, medtech, digital and genomic technologies, and advanced therapy medicinal as well as 'hybrid' products.
The changes NICE has now announced were designed to streamline and improve the way it carries out health technology evaluation. It has produced a single guidance development manual, covering diagnostic assessment, highly specialised technologies, medical technologies evaluation and technology appraisal.
The changes NICE has made are as follows:
- It will give more weight to health benefits in the most severe conditions. NICE is doing this because evidence shows people value access to treatments for the most severe diseases.
- It is adopting a new approach to the evidence it considers in its assessments.
- It will have more flexibility for NICE's independent committees in cases when generating evidence is difficult.
- It has adopted a clearer vision, principles and routing criteria for treatments for very rare diseases in its Highly Specialised Technologies Programme.
- It is aligning its methods and processes across different types of evaluations - to ensure it evaluates health technologies in a pragmatic, agile and robust way, while also being adaptable.
Where to Hear More About NICE's Future Plans
Since NICE was established 20 years ago, it has built a reputation as a world leader in providing robust, independent and trusted advice to the health and care system, and is widely respected as a world-class organisation. NICE was once again a world leader in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic by working partners and identifying and accelerating access to treatments. As the world continues to change, new treatments, practices and technologies are emerging at a rapid pace, with real world data driving a revolution in evidence.
The recently appointed Chief Executive of NICE, Dr Samantha Roberts, has a passion and background for innovation, having been Director of Innovation, Research and Life Sciences at NHS England. It will be interesting to see how she drives forward this agenda. We are delighted that Samantha will be one of the speakers at this year's PING Conference in June - The Golden Age for Life Sciences Innovation.
Amongst other speakers at this year's PING Conference will be Andy Roddam, the CEO of Our Future Health - the exciting, world-leading large-scale health data programme that the UK is pioneering - whose objective is to achieve the 'holy grail' of better understanding health data to enable earlier detection and diagnosis of disease.