Public consutlation about HealthTech – closes 6 March
Have your say about the way HealthTech (medical and diagnostic technologies) is assessed at NICE: public consultation.
The consultation is open to anyone until 6 March.
With new digital solutions like apps for smartphones, diagnostic tools and medical devices emerging all the time, NICE is adapting how it assesses and recommends health technologies. To support this NICE will be bringing their Medical Technologies Evaluation programme, Diagnostics Assessment programme, and Interventional Procedures programme into a single HealthTech programme. The HealthTech programme manual describes the 2 common overarching processes for producing guidance on health technologies and interventional procedures.
These programmes have recently produced guidance on:
- Digital technologies to support self-management of COPD
- Hybrid closed loop systems for managing blood glucose levels in type 1 diabetes
- Artificial intelligence-derived software to analyse chest X-rays for suspected lung cancer in primary care referrals
- Digital technologies for assessing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
The new plans include removing the requirement for medical devices to be cost saving for the NHS. Instead, committees will assess technologies on the cost-effectiveness, so the focus will shift to the overall benefits to people using the NHS, and its services. The update enables multiple technologies with the same purpose, that are available to the NHS, to be assessed. Updated methods and considerations for assessing technologies for early use are also included.
The update proposes some changes to how NICE involve and engage patients and clinicians in HealthTech assessments, moving from recruiting specialist committee members to the advisory committees developing the guidance, to involving patients and clinicians as nominated experts. They are asking for your views on this change and on any other improvements you think could be made to involving and engaging people and communities in Healthtech assessments.
Further information on the proposed changes can be accessed from the news story and the consultation documents live on their website.
Please contact healthtech@nice.org.uk if you have any questions about the consultation.