Technology appraisal methods and processes used before 2022

Before 2022, we used different processes for assessing technologies. You can view the previous process and methods guides below.

What changed and why

We made changes to streamline and improve the way we carry out health technology evaluation. We produced a single guidance development manual, covering:

• diagnostic assessment
• highly specialised technologies
• medical technologies evaluation
• technology appraisal.

We also developed a new topic selection manual.

Changes we made

We made a broad range of improvements to how we evaluate health technologies, including:

• We now give more weight to health benefits in the most severe conditions. We made this change because evidence shows that people in the UK value access to treatments for the most severe diseases.
• We've adopted a new approach to the evidence we consider in our assessments.
• We allow more flexibility for NICE’s independent committees in cases when generating evidence is difficult.
• We’ve adopted a clearer vision, principles and routing criteria for treatments for very rare diseases in our Highly Specialised Technologies (HST) Programme.
• We aligned our methods and processes across different types of evaluations. This ensures that the way we evaluate health technologies is pragmatic, agile and robust, while also being adaptable.