NICE process and methods

1 Introduction

1 Introduction

1.1 What this guide is for

This process guide explains how the following treatment option summaries were developed:

It explains how these products were developed in an open, transparent, and timely way, with appropriate expert input. Producing quality-assured products that can be used by healthcare professionals and patients and that can be rapidly updated as new technologies become available. The NICE Centre for Health Technology Evaluation (CHTE) can use these products to support the technology appraisal (TA) process and to ensure that recommendations within the same clinical topic area are coherent with one another.

1.2 Background

The NICE strategy sets out an ambitious vision which includes providing dynamic, living guideline recommendations that are useful, useable and rapidly updated.

NICE recommendations often cover the safe, efficient and effective use of medicines and technologies. These recommendations are spread across NICE guidelines and NICE TAs, and there can be many of these within a clinical topic area. This can make it difficult for people to locate all the information they need from NICE when they are deciding on treatments or looking at placement of a new technology within an existing pathway.

Using NICE guidance can be particularly difficult when:

  • a new technology is covered in a TA but not in a relevant NICE guideline and so its position in the care pathway is unclear

  • there are multiple recommendations for technologies that could all be used at a single point in the care pathway

  • there is a high volume of innovative technologies in a fast-moving clinical topic area.

Treatment option summaries present NICE recommendations from various sources in a structured, coordinated and clear way. They can be rapidly updated, supporting NICE's living content ambition.