The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has relaunched its non-profit international division to aid with a growing number of enquires from overseas health and social care entities.
The division – NICE International – will provide an advisory service to international organisations, including ministries and government agencies, to support the increased use of evidence-based decision making in health and social care systems.
This support will help those outside the UK develop similar systems which improve health and social care evidence-based decision making, and help to embed health technology assessment by allocating resources in a cost effective and transparent way.
The division will also advise on how to improve quality of care and reduce variations in medicine access. It will operate on a fee for service basis – meaning that the division can obtain funding directly from the client country and can also access funding from other public and charitable sources.
“We’re delighted to be relaunching NICE International so that we can share what we’ve learnt over the last 20 years to help other international health and care systems optimise their use of evidence-based practice,” said Andrew Dillon, chief executive at NICE.
NICE has become one of the world’s most prominent and well-know health technology assessment (HTA) bodies since its inception in 1999. It has set the standard for many other international institutes set up since then.
NICE International will build on the expertise of those within the organisation and draw on links with academic partners as well as world-wide experts in the HTA field.
The division’s clients will be able to learn about NICE’s products, methods and processes through seminars hosted at its offices – either in the client country or via web conference – with an opportunity to publish, translate or adapt NICE content overseas. It will also develop adapted guidelines for client countries’ own healthcare system.
In addition to this relaunch, NICE recently unveiled a long-awaited review of its health technology evaluation methodologies, which will explore evaluation methods in support of the NHS’ goal of providing faster access to new technologies to more patients.
It is unclear whether NICE International’s clients will benefit from the conclusions of this evaluation, as proposals for change are set to be presented for public consultation in the summer of 2020.
This is also not the first time that NICE has extended its global reach, having partnered with the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health (CADTH) earlier this year to offer pharma HTA services.