The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7484 p4
5/12 January 2008

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Changes to NICE procedures recommended by Health Committee

All medicines should be assessed at launch by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the Health Committee recommended this week.

In the report of its inquiry into NICE (PJ, 17 November 2007, p549), the committee commends NICE for doing a vital job in difficult circumstances. However, it identifies problems with the quality of information used to assess medicines, the affordibility of guidance, topic selection and failures to consider wider benefits of medicines to society.

The committee argues that NICE should have access to the material used by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, so that it can assess all medicines at launch, and work more closely with the pharmaceutical industry.

The affordibility of NICE guidance is of serious concern, it warns. It suggests that an independent body should determine a threshold for cost-effectiveness for NICE to use and argues that primary care trusts should play a larger part in the development of guidance.

In addition, NICE should do more to assess older therapies in order to encourage disinvestment in therapies that are not cost-effective, and legislation should be changed to allow assessments to take into account medicines’ wider benefits to society, the committee recommends.

The report also argues that NICE should make it clear to patients what they can and cannot expect by right from their local NHS organisation. However, the Health Committee says it is confident NICE can take on its recommendations. “In the past NICE has changed in response to new challenges and we are sure it can do it again,” it says.