NICE consults on new guideline proposals
Proposed changes to the process of developing clinical guidelines have been published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
In order to make the guideline development process more efficient and
in response to comments received from guideline developers, stakeholders
and the wider public, NICE proposes changes in the following areas: the
process by which stakeholders are asked to submit evidence; the consultation
process with stakeholders; external validation; the process for updating
guidelines and removing the classification from the recommendations.
Following a survey showing that few submissions received by NICE identified
evidence that had not already been sourced by the relevant National Collaborating
Centre, it is proposed that the NCC developing the guideline will call
for evidence on specific questions after it has performed initial searches. “In
confidence” data will now also be accepted as evidence.
Draft guidelines are currently consulted on for two periods of four weeks.
NICE now proposes to publish one draft guideline for an eight week consultation
period, and to no longer consult on the information for the public version
of the guideline.
NICE proposes that NCCs will be encouraged to consider arranging their
own peer review of their guidelines. NICE will commission in-depth peer
reviews of all guidelines.
A more flexible approach to updating the guidelines is proposed so that
they can be updated at any point after publication to reflect changes
in evidence base. Partial updates rather than full updates are proposed
after four years.
NICE also proposes that the current guideline classification system will
no longer be used, following concerns that translating strength of evidence
into a recommendation may hide important details
The proposals can be accessed via the NICE website.
The consultation closes on 17 February 2006.
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Hospital Pharmacist