The consultation closes at 5pm on 14 September 2023

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1. Register to comment

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2. Information about the consultation

Developing NICE guidelines: the manual outlines the methods and processes used to develop NICE guidelines.

The last substantial update of the manual was in 2014. We are now updating the manual to ensure that its methods and processes are up-to-date and best practice, and start to align them with our 5-year strategy, by publishing living, useful and useable guideline recommendations.

Because of the scale of changes in this update, and the varying rates at which changes are tested and implemented, we will consult on and publish the update in a modular format. This is to allow for quicker, dynamic updates of discrete topics or sections of the manual.

This is the second of 4 planned modules of consultation and includes draft updates of the following chapters:

2 – The scope. We have added details of scopes for topic suites, our approach to considering health inequalities, reducing consultation time of scopes to 2 weeks, and a simplified process for scopes for updates. We have also removed some operational details.

5 – Identifying the evidence: literature searching and evidence submission. We have added information on living evidence surveillance and our approach to considering health inequalities, and more information on real world data.

9 – Interpreting the evidence and writing the guideline. We have added a table outlining ‘topic areas we do not usually make recommendations on’, and information on our approach to considering health inequalities.

11 – Finalising and publishing the guideline. We have clarified information about embargoed release of guideline recommendations, added information about our approach to considering equalities and health inequalities, and updated information on promoting awareness of guidelines.

12 – Support for putting the guideline recommendations into practice. We have added the 4 strategic aims of implementation from NICE strategy, emphasised partnership working to support implementation, added detail on measuring use of guidance and using this in the guideline lifecycle, and updated information about NICE tools and resources.

Appendix L – Process and methods for guidelines developed in response to health and social care emergencies. We have added information on how recommendations on medicines are dealt with in partnership with the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation, and removed information that repeated content in the main guideline manual.

We have made minor changes throughout these chapters, such as restructuring content to make a more logical flow, and removing some operational detail and reference to other NICE products that are no longer produced. Note that links and terminology may not all work perfectly between the new draft chapters and chapters being updated later on.