Methods research areas

Currently, we are focusing on 10 priority research areas. These have been chosen to align with NICE’s forward view and to enable us to consider solutions to complex issues across our evaluations. We particularly welcome opportunities to collaborate on research projects that address these priority areas.

We also welcome approaches for collaboration on other emerging methods research areas that can help us improve and adapt our methods to the fast-paced innovation ecosystem.

By partnering with us, you can get unique insight into the real-life practicalities of assessing health and social care interventions.

Our priority areas

1. New methods of evidence generation

New methods of generating, analysing, and synthesising data and evidence are developing rapidly. These methods can help support assessment of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of health technologies.

The emerging use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health technology assessment (HTA) evidence generation activities and clinical guideline development is of particular interest for NICE. This includes use of AI in evidence identification and systematic searching. We recently published a position statement on the use of AI in evidence generation and our HTA Innovation Laboratory (HTA Lab) is continuing to explore how generative AI can inform economic modelling from development to validation. These and other research areas that align with our broader NICE statement of intent for artificial intelligence are of interest to NICE.

We are actively exploring how advances in data science can be leveraged to support decision-making in several projects. These explore new models for collating and sharing real-world data (RWD) through federated data networks (EHDEN, IDERHA), use of synthetic data (SYNTHIA), and development of guidance and tools to support use of real-world evidence (RWE) in decision-making (GREG). We are also engaging with academic and industry partners to explore use of natural language processing methods for unstructured data and the application of machine learning approaches to causal inference.

We are interested in novel clinical trial designs (e.g. adaptive, platform, basket, n-of-1 and decentralised trials), new methods of evidence synthesis (e.g. indirect treatment comparison, cross-design evidence synthesis) and advanced economic modelling approaches, including exploring use of reference models and different modelling platforms. We are working with other European partners to identify priority areas for HTA methods development (SUSTAIN-HTA) and collaborating with international HTA agencies on modelling treatment pathways within defined disease areas.

We are also collaborating within a joint methods group including Cochrane, the Campbell Collaboration, JBI and the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) to develop guidance and recommendations for the responsible use of AI in evidence synthesis.

2. Readiness for evaluating innovative technologies

Innovative health technologies are coming to market at a rapid pace and NICE needs to be ready to evaluate cutting-edge technologies that may present challenges for our methods and processes. These may be linked to the characteristics of new types of technology or associated with novel approaches to targeting specific conditions.

Our methods research helps ensure that we are ready to evaluate innovative technologies.

For example, we have several ongoing and recently completed projects exploring novel digital technologies (Wellcome Digital Mental Health), diagnostics for Alzheimer’s disease (PREDICTOM, AD-RIDDLE) and new treatments for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (ERA4TB). Our methods research has also recently contributed to the development of a new model for evaluating antimicrobials in the UK.

3. Digital health

Digital health technologies, including those supported by AI, are becoming more widespread. NICE has evaluated and recommended a series of digital health technologies across functions and conditions.

We have several projects exploring methodologies for assessing digital health technologies. These projects aim to develop frameworks to help inform evaluations and address challenges associated with digital health technologies (EDiHTA, ASSESS-DHT). We are also working in collaboration with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to explore how regulation and evaluation can support safe and effective adoption of digital mental health technologies (Wellcome Digital Mental Health).

4. Measuring health effects

NICE evaluations consider health benefits and adverse effects that are important to patients and their carers. In some cases, there may be challenges in measuring these outcomes and new approaches are being developed to address this.

The use of surrogate endpoints and their evaluation are of particular interest. We have recently published guidance from an international collaboration on the use of surrogate endpoints in cost-effectiveness analysis.

We are also exploring new approaches to measuring health effects using wearables to generate digital endpoints (AD-RIDDLE) and how simulation methods (e.g. digital twins, in silico trials) can contribute to regulation and HTA.

5. Measuring and valuing health-related quality of life

Evidence on how conditions and interventions affect people’s health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is crucial to informing NICE evaluations.

Across several projects, we are exploring how best to measure and value HRQoL for children, adults, and carers. This includes our Wellcome Digital Mental Health project where we are considering the appropriateness of different HRQoL measures for people with mental health conditions. We are also part of steering groups supporting the EQ-5D-5L valuation study and the testing of the EQ Health and Wellbeing (EQ-HWB) instrument, and are considering the potential impact of these activities on our decision-making. High quality research examining methods for measuring and valuing HRQoL in children and carers may eventually inform updates to our methods guidance.  

6. Health inequalities

Reducing health inequalities is one of our core principles and while our guidance supports strategies to improve population health as whole, the needs of specific groups of people are also considered.

We are currently working on a UKRI-funded project with partners in Europe to support the inclusion of underserved populations in clinical studies (READI). We have also completed deliberative public engagement research which was used to develop a series of recommendations for how we should approach health inequalities in our work.

To help us further develop our methods for considering health inequalities in our evaluations, we particularly welcome research on how displaced health services differentially affect social groups, research on novel methodological techniques for bias adjustment and data imputation, and the piloting of innovative methods for addressing gaps in the evidence base for groups experiencing health inequalities.

7. Environmental sustainability

NICE has been examining the potential to include environmental impact data in our guidance to reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare.

We’re exploring how feasible it is to compare environmental impacts of medicines and health technologies to inform decisions when there are limited differences in health outcomes and cost-effectiveness.

We welcome research that would help us to identify healthcare topics and products that have intrinsic characteristics which may cause specific environmental benefits, harms or vulnerabilities. Alongside this, we are interested in research on evidence sources, synthesis and quality assurance methods that can be used to appraise environmental impact analyses of these products.

8. Views and involvement of people and communities

NICE committees make moral, ethical and social value judgements as well as scientific ones. The views of people and communities inform these types of judgements and provide the basis of the NICE Principles.

We collaborate with external researchers studying how our guidance on social values is interpreted by our committees, and welcome research that helps us to better understand what matters most to society.

Our NICE Listens programme for deliberative public engagement helps us to make sure that our policies on complex and controversial issues reflect the values of informed members of the public. This programme has recently published reports on how NICE should prioritise its topics for guidance, our role in making healthcare more environmentally sustainable, and on how health inequalities should be considered in our work.

9. Implementation science

Putting our guidance into practice ensures that it benefits patients and carers, healthcare professionals, and the wider health and care system. Implementation science approaches can be used to enable better uptake.

We have previously contributed to projects focusing on how implementation science can support implementation of NICE recommendations on end-of-life care and how patients and the public can be involved in implementation and supporting uptake of evidence and guidance into policy.

We are working closely with our Implementation Strategy Group, consisting of academics and practitioners with expertise in implementation science, to identify new areas for research. We are particularly interested in exploring collaborations on how we can use implementation frameworks and models to identify best practice in supporting practitioners to increase uptake, how can innovative methods, and how audit and feedback can be used to evaluate and improve practice.

10. Evolving our decision framework

We have partnered with the US-based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) and the Canadian Drug Agency (CDA-AMC) to establish the Health Economics Methods Advisory group (HEMA), a new international initiative to research and assess HTA methods. Through HEMA, we aim to bring together leading experts in research and health economics to explore potential benefits, disadvantages, and uncertainties associated with methods and to produce guidance and recommendations for the wider HTA community.