NICE Launches 5-Year Strategy to Improve Access to New Treatments

April 22, 2021—The United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) announced the launch of new 5-year strategy to provide patients with quicker access to the latest and most effective treatments with dynamic guideline recommendations made available to health care professionals more quickly.

According to NICE, it will transform key elements of its approach to ensure efficiency and speed while maintaining robust, trusted methods. The organization noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has reaffirmed the need to place science and evidence at the heart of health and care decision-making and improve outcomes for all patients across the health care system. The strategy is intended to ensure that the organization is more proactive and engaged with the life science industry earlier in the innovation pathway to allow patients to access new treatments faster.

NICE stated it will seek to leverage its reputation for rigor and independence to keep ahead of the challenges of a rapidly changing health care landscape by forging key partnerships to expand the organization’s skills, capacity, and capabilities. It will renew and develop collaborations to support patient safety and track the adoption of improvements. This new approach will also allow NICE to evolve from producing full guidelines to adopting a “more modular, living style of recommendations,” allowing rapid updates that incorporate the latest evidence to quickly reach health care professionals, advised NICE in the announcement.

“The new strategy sets out a vision for the future where NICE will be more dynamic, work more collaboratively, and continue to build on the excellent foundations of the last 22 years,” said NICE chief executive, Professor Gillian Leng, in the announcement. “Our work to produce rapid COVID-19 guidelines during the pandemic has hastened our desire for change. We demonstrated that we can be flexible and fleet of foot, without losing the rigor of our work, and we will now look to embed that approach in our day-to-day work.

“The world around us is changing. New treatments and technologies are emerging at a rapid pace, with real-world data driving a revolution in evidence. We will help busy health care professionals to navigate these new changes and ensure patients have access to the best care and latest treatments.”

Sharmila Nebhrajani, Chair of NICE, added, “The health care of the future will look radically different from today—new therapies will combine pills with technologies; genomic medicine will make early disease detection a reality; and AI and machine learning will bring digital health in disease prevention and self-care to the fore.

“Our new strategy will help us respond to these advances, finding new and more flexible ways to evaluate products and therapies for use in the National Health Service (NHS), ensuring that the most innovative and clinically effective treatments are available to patients at a price the taxpayer can afford.

“Our work with researchers in universities and in companies helps them to translate vital medical research insights into new products and treatment guidelines for patients, and our strategy will help to ensure that these continue to be supported by the strongest possible evidence base.”

In developing its 5-year strategy, NICE advised it has consulted with its key system partners including NHS England, the Association of British HealthTech Industries, and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.