NICE-wide topic prioritisation: the manual

1 Our transformation

NICE's purpose is to help practitioners and commissioners get the best care to people fast, while ensuring value for the taxpayer. We have achieved this since 1999, delivering a huge body of guidance, grounded in the principles of independence, transparency and rigour. These are principles that are globally respected and will never be compromised.

However, the health and care system has changed rapidly since our inception, so we too must evolve. Our principles and fundamental priorities remain the same. But we are evolving to meet the changing needs of our users, increasing our focus on the relevance, timeliness, usability, affordability, and demonstrable impact of our products.

As part of this transformation and to support NICE's strategic objective to focus on what matters most, we are implementing an organisation-wide approach to topic prioritisation. This is overseen by a single prioritisation board that guides the selection and coordination of our guidance development.

This manual sets out the process for how new guidance topics and updates to existing NICE guidance are identified, prioritised and routed at NICE, and the decision-making framework used by the NICE prioritisation board. It replaces the manual on NICE health technology evaluation topic selection, and section 1.4 of the manual on developing NICE guidelines.

To complement and assist the prioritisation of topics related to public health, social care and rare diseases, the NICE prioritisation board also uses NICE's strategic principles for the prioritisation of public health, social care and rare diseases. These principles guide the application of the prioritisation framework in these areas.