NICE is launching a new programme focusing on evaluation of innovative medical technologies that could be used more quickly in the NHS.
The watchdog is extending its appraisal capacities by launching the Evaluation Pathway Programme for Medical Technologies, which will help look at the cost effectiveness of the likes of products such as medical devices and diagnostic tests.
The idea is to enable new medical technologies, or important modifications of existing ones, to be used more quickly and consistently in the NHS.
The new programme will compliment and operate in conjunction with NICE’s existing technology appraisal capacity, which will continue to evaluate new pharmaceutical and biotechnology products.
It will also support the newly created Medical Technologies Advisory Committee (MTAC), whose 25 members will meet for the first time this week (November 20).
MTAC will identify and select innovative medical technologies and route them through the appropriate NICE guidance programme. It will also develop its own guidance.
Andrew Dillon, NICE chief executive, said: “High quality care for all [NHS Next Stage Review report of 2008] acknowledged the need to simplify the pathway by which medical technologies pass from development into wider use, and develop ways to benchmark and monitor uptake.
“This new programme takes forward that vision, and we look forward to helping patients and the NHS to benefit more quickly and consistently from innovative medical technologies.”
Professor Bruce Campbell has been appointed to chair MTAC and, as a consultant vascular surgeon and chair of NICE’s Interventional Procedures Advisory Committee since 2002, has extensive experience of NICE’s evaluation processes and guidance production.
Professor Campbell said: “I am pleased to be chairing the new Medical Technologies Advisory Committee which should be able to speed up the way that promising new technologies start to be used in the NHS.
“We will select those devices and diagnostic technologies which claim to have particular advantages and be sure that they are evaluated in the best possible way. That may mean NICE evaluating them to produce guidance about their use, and it may also mean helping them to be investigated more thoroughly in research.”